White Knight Syndrome
by Neassa
Summary: "Wow, you guys are really bad at this whole hostage taking thing, aren't you?" AU associated with the Limits of Sanity 'verse. Takes place in Sly 1.
1. The One With The Reboot

Sorry, this is a little late, guys, but here we are!

If you're new here, do not read this story first! Start with Stockholm Syndrome, then Lima Syndrome, then Nightingale Syndrome, and read this last!

If you're not new here, but you don't follow my blog, this is a "what-if" story about what would have happened if Kaia had met the gang in the first game rather than the second. This means Kaia is fifteen, Sly is eighteen, and everything is slightly more liable to explode.

If you're not new here and you DO follow my blog, you already knew this and I won't delay you any longer!

Enjoy!

* * *

He inhaled deeply, taking in the slight humidity, the smell of gasoline, foliage, and sweat. All the smells of a big city, in this case Paris. The City of Lights... he liked it here. Maybe someday he could live here permanently.

But that was 'someday'. For now, down to business.

* * *

In a parallel universe, if I were to tell my dad offhand that working for Interpol sounded interesting, he would have talked me out of it by pointing out that it involved a lot of paperwork. In this particular universe, however, he was a little more overprotective and decided that the best way to prove me wrong would be through experience.

That's how I found myself loaned out to his friend in Interpol, Inspector Carmelita Montoya Fox, for the first three weeks of summer.

The upsides of this were that she was fairly nice and I got to spend the first three weeks of my summer in Paris, France; which was quite appealing to a fifteen year-old. Those were the only upsides.

I'd taken a year of French that school year, but I'd failed out second semester; this meant I knew just enough French to be able to order ice cream and realize when I was being insulted. And Carmelita was nice, as previously mentioned, but she took being an Interpol officer seriously; which meant that she took any interest in it seriously as well.

I'd been there for two weeks and had spent most of that time curled up on the small couch in Carmelita's office, reading file after file after file about the criminals she was currently pursuing. I think the whole point was to show that being an Interpol officer wasn't all running around after bad guys (even though it totally was for Carmelita, seriously, the woman hadn't been in her office for more than an hour the whole time I'd been staying with her), but what she didn't know was that first, I was lazy, second, I loved reading, and third, I hadn't actually been serious about joining Interpol, I'd just been trying to making conversation with my dad.

Still, it could have been worse. My friends could have talked me into going to rock-climbing camp with them. Now that was torture.

Lacking a driver's license and being quite a few miles (or kilometers, as she often liked to correct me) from Carmelita's flat, I wasn't about to walk back when I realized that it was midnight and she still hadn't come back from 'checking out that one lead really quickly' six hours ago.

So I took my trusty backpack, stuffed my jacket inside to make it a little more comfortable, propped it up on the arm of the couch, and settled in for a nap.

I woke up about four hours later in the most unexpected of ways, by the sound of someone trying to knock down Carmelita's door.

The shock of the noise sent me tumbling onto the ground, where I lay glaring in consternation at the ceiling for some moments, wondering if I really had just heard that. It wasn't unusual for me to imagine hearing things just before falling asleep, though usually it was the godforsaken doorbell.

After thirty seconds of silence, I'd climbed back onto the couch and just about convinced myself that nothing odd was going on (after all, I was in the heart of the Interpol headquarters, what fool would break in here?). Then the raccoon came in the window.

I stared at him. He stared at me. I reached over to the pile of books balancing precariously on the table, selected the file on top, and stared at the picture there, then back at him.

"Sly Cooper, I presume?"

His expression was very deer-in-the-headlights for a split second, then his eyes narrowed, his shoulders relaxed, and a smile curled over his lips, "Now that's not fair, you know my name, but I don't know yours."

Oh, he was one of those flirt-your-way-through-life people. I had a friend like that back home, Kurt. He learned very quickly not to try that with me.

"And it's going to stay that way. Can I help you?" I wasn't exactly scared of the guy, his file said he was only eighteen and, in person, he looked it. Besides, in all of the heists he'd pulled, he'd never even seriously injured a guard, so I could see he wasn't exactly violent.

He frowned slightly. Obviously, he'd been expecting the whole 'I'm handsome and older than you' thing to work on me just because I was a teenager. Silly boy. "I'd like that file you're holding."

I looked down at it. He wanted his own file? He should know everything that was in it, did he have amnesia or something? The only reason I could think of why a criminal would want their own file would be to find out how much the cops knew about them, and how many of them would walk into the office of the lead investigator on their case just to find out what they knew? "What the hell for?"

He was openly scowling now, "I just need it."

He really should have looked around a bit more, he would have seen the paper shredder was under the side table if he had. I swung the file around and poised it just over the gaping maw of the machine.

"Don't you _dare_."

"Or what?" I swear, it was like poking dynamite with a struck match.

He was obviously racking his brain for a reason I shouldn't destroy the file. He looked me over for a second time. I could just hear the wheels turning in his brain, "You don't work for Interpol, that's obvious." His eyes landed on my backpack, "Just visiting. And your accent says you're American. What do you think Inspector Fox would do if you shredded one of her most important files?"

"Haha, no." Now this was fun, "First, she could just print off another one. Second, even if she couldn't, she memorized this thing ages ago. Third, even if she hadn't, I have; I've read this thing at least twice a day for the past two weeks, I could recite it in my sleep." That was actually true. That file was good reading, very interesting. "So to answer your question, if I were to prevent you from taking classified police materials, she'd probably give me a medal. Points for effort though." Since he was looking like he was seriously contemplating rushing me, I quickly stuck the file in the machine.

Carmelita had one of those industrial paper shredders that ate rainforests for breakfast. By the time Cooper got to it, the only part of the file it hadn't devoured was the paper clip at the top.

He glared down at me while I tried not to look too terribly pleased with myself. To be fair, I didn't try particularly hard. He looked livid, then his expression change. For a split second, his face went completely blank, then he gave a nasty smirk and loomed over me.

"You _memorized_ the file?"

When I realized what he was on about, the triumphant smile on my lips quickly turned into a swear.

* * *

"Get back here, Cooper!"

Carmelita had really bad timing, Sly seethed as he dodged another exploding car. Honestly, you'd think she'd have been more careful. It was getting really hard to dodge and still hold on to the writhing creature on his shoulder.

So far, he didn't exactly have a shining career as a kidnapper. Of course, if he'd had a choice in the matter, he'd have picked someone quieter to kidnap.

"Put me down!" She screeched in his ear, "I'm going to kill you! I'll disembowel you and buzzards will feast on your entrails! I'll tie you onto an anchor and drop you into the Mariana Trench! I'll bite you really, _really_ hard, just you wait and see!"

He had never been so happy to see the old van Murray had restored. The back doors were thrown open (presumably by Bentley) and he dove inside, "Drive, Murray, drive!"

If he'd thought trying to keep a hold on the girl was hard when he was running and she was scared of falling off, trying to keep her from leaping out the back doors of the van before Murray could get up to speed was like trying to hold onto a greased eel. She actually got the doors open once before he grabbed a fistful of her shirt and pulled her back inside the van.

"This is bad," Bentley panicked after they had hit the highway and secured their passenger (Sly practically had to sit on her to get her to be still), "This is really, really bad."

"That is _brand new_ information!" Sly snarled, pinning the hybrid's (she _had_ to be a hybrid, no wolf or husky had eyes that color) right wrist to the small of her back with one hand while trying to find somewhere to put the other where she couldn't bite him (something she had attempted several times now).

Somehow, even though she was lying on her front, she managed to throw her leg up and kick him between the shoulder blades. "Get off!"

He winced as the heel of her foot barely missed his spine, "Bentley, don't we have any rope?!"

"I don't know, Sly, I wasn't planning on kidnapping anyone today!"

"Wow, you guys are really bad at this whole hostage taking thing, aren't you?" The girl asked, trying to figure out a way to contort her free arm so she could pinch the raccoon on her back.

"Well it's not like we've had a lot of practice," Sly growled, grabbing her left wrist and forcing it to join her right when she got a little too close to his leg for comfort.

She twisted her head so she could see him over her shoulder, "You are not a very nice person."

"You should see me on a bad day."

"Is this a good day?"

"Can we please focus?" Bentley snapped.

"Guys, please don't fight."

"It's fine, Murray, just drive."

"Tell me there was another way, Bentley; one that wouldn't alert Interpol to what we wanted and cause them to make it even harder to get. Tell me there's still a better way and I will throw her out of this car right now, I will do it."

"I would love to see you try. I will _so_ take you down with me."

Bentley scrubbed a hand over his face, "I can't think of one, no. Provided you think of a way to get her to tell us what we want to know."

"What can you not know from your own file, I am honestly curious. Did you take a knock on the head or something?"

"Hits to the head rarely cause amnesia like that, it's usually caused by psychological trauma and it rarely lasts more than a week or so anyway."

"Yes, thank you for the psychology lesson Bentley." This night was not going how Sly planned at all. Get in, get the file, flirt with Carmelita, get out. Was that really so hard?

"As for the hamsters that are inevitably burning rubber in your silly little minds about how to get the information out of me, you could try torture or threats, but you don't really seem the type and I would lie to you anyway."

"Yeah, and what _will_ make you talk to us?" Sly asked suspiciously.

She shrugged, as much as she could lying face-down with her hands behind her back anyway, "Tell me what you want to know and why you want to know it and we'll go from there."

"You are seriously not scared at all, are you?"

She scoffed, "For real? You guys are about as scary as a set of bunny slippers. In the last twenty minutes I've ruined the thing you were trying to steal, kicked you in the back, and mouthed off more times than I can count. I am still in remarkably good health. This is not exactly a typical hostage situation."

"You know... she's got a point." Bentley said.

"Yes, listen to the turtle with the bow tie. Bow ties are cool."

Still, Sly hesitated. He didn't exactly feel like spilling his life's story to this kid. He looked to Bentley for help, but the turtle could only shrug. They didn't exactly have a lot of options.

"You read my file." He said softly, "You know what happened to my dad. I need to find the people who killed him. And before you get all up in arms, this isn't about vengeance. They took something. I need to get it back. In order to do that, I need to know who they were."

She hummed lightly in thought. Then, after a moment, "Alright, fine. Now get off me so I can list my conditions."

"Now the hostage gets to make the demands?"

"Yup, cause that's just how I roll. Now c'mon, get the lead out, I think you're pinching a nerve in my back!"

* * *

Oh, thank God that worked.

I sat back on my knees, making a point to roll my shoulders and pop the vertebrae in my back loudly. It had been a bit of a leap to bargain that they wouldn't attempt to force the info out of me, but apparently my first impression of them had been sound. It was a bit surprising, but I wasn't going to scrutinize it too much.

"Alright," I said shifting into a cross-legged position and closing my eyes, trying to recall. I hadn't been bluffing, I could remember the file. One of the few talents I could claim, aside from the ability to hold my breath for nearly a full minute, was a good visual memory. Not photographic by any means, but still pretty good. I called up the file in my mind.

Sly Cooper's father, Connor Cooper, had evidently been slain by a group known as 'The Fiendish Five'. While sounding like they stepped straight out a of a children's game, this wasn't a group you wanted to mess with unless you had something substantial to gain, which Cooper clearly did.

"'The Fiendish Five'," I muttered, trying to recall exactly what I'd seen, "There are several people who are thought to be part of the group, but the only one that Interpol has really confirmed is someone by the name of Sir Raleigh the Frog. He was originally born into quite the inheritance, but apparently got bored, tried out piracy, and found that it was a lot more fun. He's got a criminal talent with machines and was last sighted near the 'Isle O' Wrath'. It's in the middle of the Welsh Triangle. Well," I sat back and enjoyed the slightly baffled looks on their faces, "That takes care of that, then." I draped myself over the back of the front seat and addressed the pink hippo there, 'Murray' apparently, "You can just drop me off anywhere in the next town."

"Not a chance."

"Huh?" I looked over my shoulder at the turtle. "Why not?"

He was giving me slightly amused and slightly annoyed look, "We're criminals, we're not stupid. You're coming with us. You could be lying about where to go and even if you're not, you'll just go back to Interpol and tell them where we're headed."

I frowned and pointed at him, "You are anti-nice."

The raccoon was smirking now, "Want to change the info you gave us?"

I scowled at him, "No, I actually told you the truth. Raleigh was sighted at the Isle O' Wrath shortly before the surrounding waters became exceedingly dangerous, causing the area to be known as the 'Welsh Triangle' in reference to the 'Bermuda Triangle'. That was almost a decade ago, so the information is old, but it's what was in the police report."

"Alright, looks like we're going to Wales."

I chewed on the inside of my lip, thinking. If I really was going to be stuck with them... "We do need to stop in the next town though. Seriously."

"Or what?"

* * *

"That is disgusting."

"I warned you," I said, after having Murray make an emergency stop on the side of the road so I could empty the contents of my stomach all over the beautiful French countryside. I sat heavily on the asphalt and squinted against the rising sun. "'We need to stop and buy medicine', I said. 'I get motion sick', I said."

"Yes, well you can hardly blame us for thinking you were lying," Bentley poked his head out from where he was inside the van. He passed something to Cooper, who passed it to me, "Drink that, it should make you feel better until we get to a town and can get some medicine."

I took the can, "Ginger ale, classic."

"Yeah, yeah, hurry up, we need to get back on the road." The raccoon was scowling, looking down the road like he expected Carmelita to crest a distant hill, shock pistol blazing.

"Oh, come off it, Princess, you can wait a second." Mmm, the ginger ale was nice and cool. I was already starting to feel better. Motion sickness sucked, it really did. There was not a word for how much I envied people who didn't have it.

"You are the most antagonizing person I have ever met."

I was scowling now too. "Oh right, and you're Prince Charming, are you? You're eighteen, right? You have the patience of a six-year-old."

"Patience?" He hissed, "You want to talk about patience?!"

"No, I-!" I'd gone to take a dramatic step toward him, but then my foot missed the ground. Fortunately, I was saved from making a rather spectacular and painful faceplant by Cooper, who was, y'know, right there.

"Wow, Bentley," I heard him say, "Did you up the potency for that stuff?"

"I just made it so it's absorbed more quickly by the body. Now bring her into the van, we have to get going."

I felt... funny. Like someone had stuffed a bunch of cotton inside my skull. I dimly registered that I was being hauled inside the van and we were driving again, but I was a bit distracted.

"Faeries," I mumbled vaguely, waving my fingers toward the blurry lights floating overhead. When did I end up lying on my back?

"Really, you don't say?" Now the raccoon sounded like he found something hilarious.

I let my head flop over in his direction. He was sitting nearby but he was all... fuzzy, for some reason. "Mmhmm..." I reached over and poked his nose, "Bipolar."

I didn't have to be able to see well to know he rolled his eyes, "That's nice, go to sleep."

"Moooooooodswings..." I twirled a finger, watching it in fascination until being distracted by something else and just letting my arm drop to the floor, "Your tail is mesmerizing."

"_Sleep,_ before I decide it's not worth the hassle and smother you."

I let my eyes slide closed because that sounded like a lovely idea. "I feel like now is a good time to mention that my dad works for the FBI."

The last thing I heard before drifting off was the strangled noise Cooper made that sounded rather like an angry cat.

* * *

"You can't actually smother her, you know." Bentley pointed out, upon looking up from his laptop and seeing the death glare that Sly was giving their passenger.

"I can entertain the thought as much as I want." He grumbled, "Tell me that her dad doesn't seriously work for the FBI."

The turtle shook his head, "Sorry, he really does. So does her uncle, for that matter."

The raccoon rubbed his forehead in exasperation. "Lovely. You got her info already? That was fast."

Bentley shrugged, "Not really. She's a second generation hybrid, those are about as easy to come by as leprechauns. Her existence is practically public record."

"Alright, so what've you got?"

"Her name is Kaia Gardenia Jenks, daughter of special agent Stephen Jenks and journalist Melissa Bellingham. She just finished her freshman year of high school and is fifteen years old."

"Fifteen?" Sly snorted, "She looks about thirteen at most."

"Well, she's a hybrid, she's short." Bentley rubbed the back of his neck, "The info she gave us about Raleigh was solid, though. Chief machinist for the Fiendish Five, last sighted near the Isle O' Wrath. I'm in the process of acquiring a ferry to cross the water with the van."

"Fantastic." The thief nudged the hybrid with a foot, which he immediately retracted when she blindly reached for it in her sleep, "What about this thing?"

"I was serious before, we have to keep her with us until we finish our business with Raleigh at least, we can't have her going back to Interpol and letting them know what we're up to."

Sly grimaced, "Do we have to?"

Bentley rolled his eyes, "Yes, Sly. Give it a chance, you might get to like her."

His friend gave him a look as though he were seriously worried for his sanity.

* * *

End chapter one!

There are going to be ten or eleven chapters of this, so it'll be the shortest and last installment in the Syndrome Saga. I don't have a title for the next part of the Limits of Sanity series, but the Syndrome Saga is only the beginning. My blog is the most up-to-date source of information, the address is on my blog, so check it out if you're so inclined and I'll see you in a couple of weeks!


	2. The One With The Cookies

Hey guys! I just almost copy-pasted Chapter 3 in here instead of Chapter 2. Man, you guys would have been lost. Also, I have a fever and a headache, which is probably the reason for the almost-mix-up. It's also why I'm going to stop writing this note now.

Enjoy!

* * *

I awoke with that singular feeling of having been in an extremely deep sleep. You know the one, where you feel as though you have become one with the mattress. Or in my case, the carpet. My nose crinkled. Why was I on carpet? It smelled like feet and pizza.

I sneezed once, then opened my eyes. It took me all of two seconds to remember what had happened. I sat up _way_ too fast and almost immediately found myself horizontal again, glaring at the ceiling as the white sparklies faded from my vision.

"Good morning, starshine." The dry acknowledgement came from somewhere to my left. It sounded like the turtle.

I sat up more slowly this time. I meant to look over and look at him, but instead my head tilted forward and I found myself staring at my toes and announcing, "Hey, I have legs."

"Congratulations."

My brain _finally_ managed to rearrange all the most recent images in my head (blurry or otherwise) into some form of explanation, "Did you _drug_ me?"

He shrugged, "We had a long drive ahead of us. I did remember to get these, though." He tossed something over his shoulder. My reflexes were even less awake than the rest of me, so it hit me in the face.

I rubbed the site of impact and picked up the small tube. Motion-sickness meds. At least he got the right kind.

"Where's the hippo and the fun-sucker?" I asked, crawling over to Bentley to look over his shoulder at his computer.

To my surprise he actually paused in his typing to snicker a bit. "Sly's out getting himself into Raleigh's operation. Murray is out finding snacks. I don't know how, considering we're on an island, but he'll probably come back with peanuts or sunflower seeds or something."

My stomach let out a pitiful gurgle at the mention of food. Bentley took pity on me and reached into a container at his side, producing a package of peanut butter crackers that I greedily snarfed down. "So, Raleigh _is _here then?" I was honestly surprised. Why would a known criminal stay in one place for a decade?

"According the amount of security here, yeah."

"That seems... suspicious."

He looked at me appraisingly, "I agree. But asking Sly to follow the logic of self-preservation and generally do things that prevent, you know, death is about as effective as trying to paint a rainbow with water. And equally as frustrating."

"Yeah, I noticed that he didn't exactly seem like the most safety-conscious guy around." That was an understatement. Anyone who flirted with Carmelita was basically asking to be either arrested or shot. Sometimes both.

"Oh yes." His computer suddenly started beeping and he held up a hand, "Observe."

He pressed a button in a program I'd never seen before and a small window appeared that showed the raccoon in question. From the little light above the monitor, I would guess that he could see Bentley as well.

"_That blimp seems like the most secured location on this island._" Cooper launched right in, directing some sort of camera toward a dark shape in the sky, "_If Raleigh's really as smart as your research suggests, that's where I'll find him._"

"Wonderful idea..." Bentley nodded, "But your plan is flawed."

The raccoon frowned, "_Why?_"

"Because it's impossible to get near him," Bentley said as though explaining a very simple conclusion, "To access Raleigh's blimp, you'd have to sneak through that high-voltage power tube. To do that without getting electrocuted, you'd have to destroy that power generator. And to do _that_, you need two more of Raleigh's treasure keys, which are heavily guarded."

"_... Interesting. So when are you going to get to the 'impossible' part?_"

My mouth dropped open. Seriously?

"Fine!" Bentley snapped, "But I warned you!" A few short bursts of typing later, "I've marked the areas you need to hit with holographic markers. Follow them to your objectives."

"_Thanks!_" Cooper said, far too happily.

"_Don't_ mention it." The turtle grumbled, "It's your funeral." He closed the connection.

"How have you not punched him in the face yet?" I asked, genuinely curious.

"I have skinny arms; if I hit Sly, I'd probably fracture something."

"So why do you put up with him?"

He turned around to look at me fully for the first time since I'd woken up, one eyebrow raised like his opinion of my intelligence had suddenly dropped, "We're family. That's what we do."

"Well, yeah," awkward conversation about family with orphan is awkward, "But I know tons of brothers that can't seem to even be civil to each other unless they're in different states."

"Well," he spun back around to face his computer, "I bet all of those brothers have one thing in common."

"What?"

"Parents."

I then decided that it was in my best interest to get my foot out of my mouth and let Murray in when he started banging on the back doors of the van.

* * *

"I'm so bored. I want my iPod. My iPod would make my life right now _so_ much better. But no. I don't have my iPod. Do you know why?"

"_Oh, _please _tell me._"

"Because, when I was taken on this spectacular little adventure against my will, _someone_ wouldn't let me grab my backpack. Even though it would only have taken half a second."

"_I was kind of in a hurry._"

"Also my shoes. Who kidnaps someone and doesn't let them take their shoes?"

The video stream on the laptop before me shook as Cooper turned his binocucom over in his hands, "_Is there not a mute button on this thing? Put Bentley back on._"

"Bentley left after the whole thing with the barrel and the murderous globes. He was frustrated. I think he and Murray are working on the van." A loud clang from the front of the vehicle confirmed my suspicions, "He told me how to turn on the mic and said I could talk as much as I wanted."

"_He is way too good at revenge sometimes_."

"Well maybe you should be nicer to him. I mean, out of the two of you, he certainly seems to be the party more concerned with making sure you continue to do the important things in life, like breathing and having a heartbeat and stuff."

"_Oh don't _you_ start lecturing me._"

"Well it's far too easy, you're not a very nice person." Then I was silent for a few moments, just long enough to make him think I'd run out of stuff to say, "... I'd kill you for my iPod. Well, really I'd kill you for a chocolate chip cookie; I'd just rather, you know, have my iPod."

"_Oh that's very specific. Nice to know you wouldn't kill me for just any cookie, no, it has to be a chocolate chip cookie._"

"Well yeah, if the cookie in question is oatmeal raisin or snickerdoodle or something, then you're dead and I have a cookie I'm not going to eat and nobody wins." I realized I was on a roll with the cookie soliloquy when it came to my attention that I could actually monitor the raccoon's vitals via the computer and saw that his blood pressure was slowly, but surely, starting to rise. "And it can't be one of those thin, crunchy chocolate chip cookies either. It has to be one of those thick, chewy ones that aren't even crunchy around the edge."

"_You have very specific cookie criteria._"

"Well I have to, especially now that I'm considering a career as a hit woman paid exclusively in cookies."

"_For the love of God, _please _stop talking._"

"Not a chance. Seriously though, who has lily pads big enough to jump on?"

"_Um, a _frog_, genius._"

"I mean, who has a path of lily pads in his treasure vault? It leads straight to the key!" I squinted at the screen, "This is barely security. I mean, sure he's got the laser beams of death, but their off-switches literally call attention to themselves. And only two guards? It's like he wants you to come up to visit!"

"_Shut up, don't jinx it._" He snagged the key, grabbed the last clue bottle, then ran back to the safe, "_Seriously, get Bentley. I need him to decipher the clues._"

"No you don't." I said around the pencil in my mouth, carefully lining up the ruler on the page in front of me.

"_Listen kid, are you an idiot? We need to get into this safe and he's the only one with the brains to figure out all of these numbers._"

"You're rude," I informed him, quickly jotting down three numbers. "Bentley already opened two safes, he got an idea for the codes and worked up a rough key for me. He's still taking his frustration out on the engine of the van. The code is four-three-six. And don't call me 'kid', I'm only three years younger than you."

"_You're legally a minor and I'm legally an adult, I can call you 'kid' as much as I want. And I don't trust your work. For all I know, that code sets off the alarm._"

"How on earth would having you set off the alarm help me? We're on a virtually unreachable island, in a part of the ocean controlled by a weather machine which is in turn controlled by a criminal. I want to get out of here as fast as possible and it looks like that means helping you get whatever it is that you're getting."

"_It's a book, it my family's book of techniques._"

A book, huh? That was actually a tolerable answer. "Good for you, now enter the code or I swear by all that is considered holy, I _will_ start singing!"

Cooper's code-entering skills were quite fast when he put his mind to it. "_Have mercy._" He commented dryly.

The safe swung open, "See! I told you."

"_Another page of the Thievius Raccoonus._" He gently lifted the sheet of paper, "_Excellent._"

"What does it say?" I asked, curious despite myself.

"_Like I'm going to tell you._" He tucked the paper carefully into his backpack, then placed a calling card in the safe, leaving it open.

"Who keeps stationery in their gloves?"

Cooper just sighed.

* * *

"What's that?" I asked, pointing at a small bit of the tangle of machinery under the hood of the team van.

"That's the distributor cap," Murray cheerily informed me, spraying half-chewed peanut all over the engine.

I nodded, like I understood what he was talking about, and continued to watch him work. I knew a little about a lot, but I knew next to nothing about mechanics, something I hoped to remedy. It wasn't going particularly well. The last time he had given me something's name I asked him what it was and he looked at me like I was an idiot, an especially debilitating expression when coming from Murray.

In one of his expeditions to collect Raleigh's 'treasure keys', Cooper had sabotaged his weather machine. He hadn't knocked it out completely; Raleigh was a genius machinist, he wouldn't have just one area that could knock out everything else. It had, however, stopped raining, which was why I'd ventured out of the van at all.

Now though, I yawned. I wasn't sure what time it was or how long I'd 'slept' earlier. Maybe I could catch a quick nap in the van.

Of course, as many of my plans had had a tendency to do as of late, that plan went straight to hell as soon as I decided to implement it.

This was through no fault of my own, but more because, as soon as I opened the back doors to crawl into the van, I noticed the Bentley was conversing with Cooper via his laptop.

"... I've found a way up to Raleigh's hideout, but unfortunately it's doomed to failure."

"_You're not going to tell me I have to shoot myself out of that cannon?_"

"I'm afraid that's the only way."

"_Now you're talking!_"

"You're really scaring me, man." I agreed with Bentley. The raccoon was not only willing to shoot himself out of a cannon, but was excited about it. That was seriously messed up. "Anyway, to get inside that thing, you're going to have to steal all seven of Raleigh's treasure keys."

"_So what are we waiting for? You show me those... 'holo-what's-it's-_"

"You mean my holographic markers?" Something told me that Bentley was trying to make a point by correcting him, but I couldn't fathom what it was.

"_Yeah yeah, and I'll swipe whatever it takes to get shot out of that cannon and steal back my family's Thievius Raccoonus!_"

Cooper must have cut the connection then because Bentley stared at the screen for a moment, carefully removed and set aside his glasses, then threw his head down on his keyboard with a loud thud and left it there until his computer started beeping in protest.

"I have an idea." I suggested brightly, closing the van doors behind me, "How's about we leave him here? We go back to the mainland, I buy you and Murray breakfast, and we part as unlikely friends."

He laughed slightly, rubbing his forehead and replacing his glasses. "I'd love to take you up on that, but unfortunately I have a conscience. You can go back just as soon as you have nothing relevant to tell the cops."

"Curses, you've seen through my cunning plan." I sat next to him, looking at the overhead map he'd somehow acquired of the Isle O' Wrath. "Holographic markers? Can't the guards see them?"

"No. That device Sly has is called a binocucom, it's something I made to help him on heists. I project the signals so that when he looks at a certain area through the binocucom, a waypoint will appear. Since I have a map, I can set the coordinates here, see? And over here..."

* * *

As Sly made his way through the gunboat graveyard, his mind began to wander. This was through no fault of his own, he'd been trying to keep a tight leash on the thing, but the graveyard was so sparsely guarded that he was actually bored dodging in and out of spotlights and collecting the clues Bentley needed to open the safe Sly had yet to find.

So his thoughts began to worm their way out of the chokehold he'd kept them in over the last few months as he concentrated solely on becoming the best thief he could possibly be in order to steal back his legacy. They were tenacious little creatures, unfortunately, and as always turned his mind toward things he would just rather not think about.

The first and foremost thing they concentrated on was, of course, his relationship with his friends.

He angrily shook the thought away. There was nothing wrong with his relationship with Bentley and Murray. Sure, maybe it was a little strained sometimes, but it had been that way for years now. They weren't kids anymore. And it wasn't going to last much longer anyway.

Sure, they all acted like they were just getting started as a team, but Sly couldn't shake the feeling that, if it weren't for him, they'd be living completely normal lives. And they'd probably feel the longing for normality after he'd gotten his family's book back. They were probably feeling it now. No way would they want to stick around for long and he wasn't going to ask them to. After this all was over, Bentley would go get some ridiculously complicated job with computers and Murray would probably be doing something with cars.

As for Sly...

Well, that was another one of those things he'd rather just not think about.

He smashed open the last of the bottles against the wing of a downed plane and unrolled the small scrap of paper within. Sometimes there would be riddles, gibberish, equations, mathematics that (according to Bentley) actually were riddles, or just random doodles. In this case, however, there was simply a string of numbers.

He opened the connection to send a picture of the numbers to Bentley, but his fingers froze on the binocucom when his earbud crackled to life and fed him the sound from the other side of the microphone.

The turtle was laughing.

Sly didn't know why he was so surprised by this, he'd heard Bentley laugh hundreds of times before... just... not recently. Well of course not recently, they'd been planning how to get the _Thievius Raccoonus_ for ages now and they were all a little stressed out.

"... You are ridiculous!" Bentley was saying.

"It's a legitimate theory!" It was that girl. What was her name? Something with a 'j'. 'Jenkins' or something. Maybe 'Jenks', yeah, that was it. Heh, 'Jinx'. It certainly fit. "You just watch, I'm _so_ right!"

"I will bet you any amount of money that you didn't even get a single number right."

"... You don't really seem like a betting man."

"I'm not. This isn't a gamble; this is free money."

"Oh, go boil your head."

Before he could help himself, he broke in, "Please tell me I'm about to settle an argument."

"Sly!" Bentley sounded excited. Again, he didn't know why this surprised him. Bentley got excited over a lot of things, "Did you get the last clue?"

"Yeah," He snapped a picture of the clue and sent it in, "Work your magic."

Out of curiosity, he left the connection open as he made his way to the safe. There was about a minute of the sound of pencils on paper, then a very loud and angry, "Oh, screw you, Raleigh!"

"I told you so."

"Silence, smug reptile."

He smirked slightly. This was just too entertaining. "So, do either of you have a code for me?"

"This process makes no sense!"

"It makes perfect sense, your thought process is just skewed. Alright, Sly. Are you at the safe?"

He entered the numbers and listened to the bickering and felt oddly at ease for being in the middle of a gunboat graveyard.

* * *

Cooper had shot himself out of the cannon and up to Raleigh's weather machine almost half an hour ago and we hadn't heard from him since.

Bentley had started to panic after about ten minutes, so Murray had driven the van onto the ferry we were using and prepared for a quick exit. This proved to be a good idea when the weather machine sputtered out completely a few minutes later.

"Um, guys?" I leaned on the railing, looking down at the post the ferry was tied to. It was barely visible under the rapidly-rising water. "We need to cut loose. Like, now."

"Sly's not here yet!" Bentley was rapidly looking between the small rock tunnel Cooper was meant to come out of and whatever he had pulled up on his computer. "Come on, buddy, you can make it..."

I chewed on the inside of my lip anxiously. This was nerve-wracking. How did they deal with the adrenaline? "We can cut loose and still stick around until he gets here, I just don't want this thing to go taut before we can cut it."

Granted, I didn't know that much (anything at all) about boats, but somehow, I didn't think it would be a good thing if we were tethered to a dock that was completely submerged.

We did have to cut the rope. We stayed as close to the dock as we could, but something was going on with the steadily rising water (and I wasn't quite sure what), that kept trying to draw us out to the ocean.

We were about twenty yards from shore when Cooper finally came out of the steadily-flooding tunnel in the rock, one hand clutching his cane tightly, the other clenched around one strap of his backpack.

He waded down to the end of the dock, but still wasn't anywhere near the boat. I wondered why he stopped there, didn't just swim for the boat, until I heard Bentley behind me on the binocucom.

"Sly, you have to try! I picked up transmissions from Interpol, they're closing in as we speak!"

Even from that distance, I could see Cooper's expression twist into a grimace. He cast the water several dark looks before taking a step back, slipping his backpack off his shoulders and onto his arm. He spun it by the straps once, twice, and again before sending it flying in a high arc toward the boat.

Murray managed to catch the red pack, just about the time Bentley started up a round of panicky squawking into the binocucom, "What are you doing?"

It was about then that the pieces finally came together in my head. Cooper couldn't swim, he was planning on staying behind and wanted his friends to hang on to whatever was in that pack so Interpol didn't get it when he was arrested.

Something struck me as... fundamentally wrong about the situation.

I pinched my lower lip between my teeth and took a look around the deck. There was a life-preserver on the wall that was probably as much for show as anything, but it was secured by a very long rope wrapped around a winch.

I didn't like Cooper. I found him condescending and narcissistic. But I liked Bentley. He was kind and loyal and currently appeared to be on the verge of an anxiety attack. Or an asthma attack. One of the two.

After slinging the life preserver up onto my shoulder, I unlocked the rope wheel, and threw one leg over the railing.

"What are _you_ doing?!"

I threw Bentley a grin, "Four years on a swim team." Bracing myself on the outside of the railing, I dove into the water.

I wasn't lying, I was a good swimmer. It had just been a very long time since I'd been in the water. Still, the momentum of the dive gave me a fair deal of distance and strong swimming is something you never really forget, so I was able to reach the dock with a minimum of difficulty.

To my surprise, Cooper reached out a hand to help me up when I reached him; saying, "Should have known you'd want to be here for this."

Ah, he thought I wanted to watch him get arrested. I just loved surprising people.

I grabbed his hand in a tight grip, clenching the life preserver between my arm and my side, and grinned up at him, "Hang on."

Then I planted my feet on the underside of the dock and used my leverage to pull him into the water.

He started flailing as soon as he hit, arms flying every which way before securing themselves around my neck and shoulder with a death grip. It was hard for me to stay above water even with the life preserver, I had to keep dragging quick, desperate breaths whenever my mouth and nose even partially cleared the surface.

Fortunately, Bentley picked up on what I was doing almost instantaneously and put Murray on the winch. The rope attached to the life preserver to which I was so ardently clinging snapped taut so quickly I almost let go of the flotation device.

Then we were gliding through the water. Not fast, but I could tell we were making progress to the boat, the current actually aiding us, despite the fact that Cooper's weight was a significant drag.

In spite of these problems, I wasn't scared. That was weird for me, drowning was at the top of my list for ways I didn't want to die. I should have been scared out of my mind, but I wasn't.

I didn't have much time to contemplate that, though, because a pink hand the size of a dinner plate had plunged into the water and grabbed the back of my shirt. I could only assume another had done the same with Cooper, considering the lack of weight around my neck when we were lifted free of the water.

Then we were on the deck. Cooper was making inarticulate noises of barely restrained panic (apparently he wasn't just unable to swim, he was scared of it. Oops.) while I coughed and spluttered out the water I hadn't been able to avoid inhaling, then taking wonderful, deep breaths.

"Murray, let's go!"

Just in time too, if the distant flashes of red and blue against the clouds were anything to go by.

"What the hell was _that_?!" Cooper sounded livid.

I just sighed, grabbed my heavy braid, laden with water, and pulled it over my shoulder to wring it out, "You're welcome."

* * *

Hope you guys enjoyed! Feel free to leave a review and head on over to the blog if you haven't already. I'll see you guys in a couple of weeks!


	3. The One With The Gesture of Solidarity

Uploading this right quick before bed! For those of you who are curious, work on the sequel to Nightingale Syndrome is underway as we speak!

For the rest of you, enjoy the chapter!

* * *

Bentley was glad that at least Sly stopped sniping at Kaia when he realized that, out of all of them, she was the only one who didn't have any dry clothes to change into, leaving her curled up in a cold, miserable, seasick ball in the corner all the way back to England.

Upon docking, they found the nearest hotel and took conjoined rooms. Kaia immediately vanished into the bathroom and, within seconds, the sound of a shower turning on was heard.

"I can't believe she did that..." Sly hissed, pacing.

Bentley wasn't a confrontational person, but he spent a good, long moment just then contemplating the merits of verbally tearing his good friend a new one. Then he noticed that Sly's hands were shaking slightly and everything made sense.

He sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, squeezing his eyes shut. Sly and gratitude had roughly the same relationship as water and pure sodium- they could only coexist for about a second and a half before combusting violently.

He vaguely thought he deserved recognition for everything he put up with. Maybe not from Sly or even Murray, but from _someone_.

Maybe he'd be canonized- the Patron Saint of Patience in Regard to Teenage Angst.

"Sly," he finally sighed out, "You do know that she's the only reason you're not being fingerprinted right this second, right?"

"Yeah, and _you_ realize how weird that is right? I mean, what's her endgame?"

Endgame... Bentley pinched his nose a bit harder. "I know it's against your nature, but maybe consider that she was actually helping?"

The look the raccoon gave him was flat, "'Helping'?"

"On impulse and probably regretting it now, but yes. I cannot think of a single ulterior motive she could possibly have had. And I spent most of our travel time thinking about just that."

Sly crossed his arm and averted his gaze, "There has to be some reason."

The turtle just sighed, letting his hand fall. Flat out telling Sly that he was being paranoid (and coming from _Bentley_, that was saying something) would just convince the thief even more, so instead he just said, "If you're so convinced, talk to her and figure it out yourself. You two are sharing that room," he nodded to the one Kaia had claimed by virtue of disappearing into the shower, "Don't look at me like that, the sooner you two stop acting like you want to eviscerate each other, the sooner I can stop having a migraine. Get."

It was probably just the fact that Sly was so surprised that allowed Bentley to shut the door in his face.

Before he completely drifted off to sleep, he heard the sound of muffled voices next door. At least they weren't shouting and didn't even sound that antagonized. He figured that was probably a good sign.

* * *

Sly had never been so out of his element.

He was an extrovert, a very social person, he could at least _banter_ with just about anyone. But Jinx was the Left-Field poster child, _nothing_ she did made sense so he had no idea if he was supposed to like her or smother her with a pillow in her sleep.

Still, even though he was sort of leaning towards the last option, she _was_ the reason Interpol hadn't arrested him in the Welsh Triangle, so he owed her if nothing else. That decided it for him.

Once he decided to at least _try_ to be civil, he finally had a course of action. Having something to _do_ helped a lot. He rummaged around in his bag until he found a clean shirt that had somehow survived a handful of heists without being destroyed or irreparably stained. Further search revealed a pair of sweats he was pretty sure he didn't own (though he suspected Bentley put them there after that one time Sly had gotten sick and didn't have any warm clothes).

He picked the lock on the bathroom door, then opened it just enough to place the clothes inside before closing and locking it again. Just in time too, he heard the water shut off just as he stepped back from the door.

Sly paced back to his bed, the one closest to the door, and sat on the edge, finally giving into the temptation to pull his backpack onto his lap and gently pull free the hard-won papers inside.

He'd barely had time to so much as glance at the page (ancient Japanese script copied into several different languages as the book changed hands over the centuries) before the bathroom door opened and a cloud of steam escaped, followed shortly by Jinx.

Sly wasn't sure why he was so surprised at how small she looked, long hair looking bedraggled at best, clothes so many sizes too big (he was surprised the pants were staying on, even with the drawstring).

They stared at each other for a long minute, him going completely still, her working her fingers nervously through her hair in absence of a brush. Sly might not have been as good at reading people as Bentley, but even he could see she was trying to decide whether or not to accept the shaky offer of a truce.

Finally, she cleared her throat and said, "Thanks. For the clothes."

Something eased in Sly's chest and he shrugged, subconsciously moving over a bit on the bed, a silent invitation that the hybrid accepted, coming to sit beside him.

"Are those the pages of the book you were looking for?"

He nodded, "As far as I can tell, they detail a technique developed by one of my ancestors from feudal Japan, Rioichi Cooper." His fingers twitched toward the sketch in the corner, a figure shadowed by a cloak, only clearly a raccoon by virtue of his tail. "The Ninja Spire Jump, I think." He cut himself off there, he still wasn't going to trust her, he wasn't going to tell her what the technique was supposed to let him sneak past.

That was all they said, for a while. Sly read over the pages in his hands and Jinx wrestled her fingers through her hair until it was moderately untangled.

It was... well, calm. Not really nice, but it wasn't bad in any way. Which of course meant it didn't last.

"So, this book you're looking for, that's what was in the safe at your house, all those years ago?"

Sly looked at the hybrid sharply, "How did you know that?"

She merely blinked at him, like she hadn't just thrown out that information casually, "I read your file, Sly. Don't you think I read your dad's too?"

The tightness in the raccoon's chest returned with a vengeance, twisting up in his heart and lungs until he stood abruptly, placed the pages back in his backpack, and strode purposefully into the bathroom, leaving only a strangled, "I'll take my shower now." in his wake.

* * *

I lay awake for most of the night, cursing both my curiosity and my utter lack of tact.

Seriously, what had I been thinking? Cooper had reacted to next to nothing the whole time I'd been around except mention of his dad, it was a sore subject with flashing signs and freaking _neon_ and I'd still stomped all over it.

I pretended to be asleep when Cooper came out of the shower, made his way to the only other bed in the room, and settled in. It didn't take him long to fall asleep at all, but I kept curling into a tighter ball, watching the curtains over the window as the breeze from the air conditioner made them wave.

I might not like Cooper, but only a horrible person wouldn't feel bad about what I'd just done. And he'd even offered an olive branch beforehand, I sucked at being a person.

The night passed mostly in a slightly varied feedback loop of those thoughts and before I knew it, the sky was lighting beyond the curtains and I hadn't gotten any sleep at all.

I finally got up about an hour later, after staring fruitlessly at the ceiling and hoping to still squeeze in a little sleep.

I slid out from under the covers as silently as I could, which wasn't very, and shuffled over to the nearby table, trying not to trip over the hem of the too long sweatpants that refused to stay rolled up. A brochure of sorts for the hotel sat there, so I settled in and idly flipped through it.

Excellent, they apparently served breakfast. My stomach grumbled at me. I hadn't eaten anything since the peanut butter crackers Bentley gave me what felt like ages ago.

Still... I let my eyes slide over to the second bed in the room. Cooper was sprawled out, looking exactly as young as he was, now that he didn't have that cocky expression on his face. I wondered if he'd hear me leave. If he did, I had no delusions that I could get downstairs before he caught up with me. He'd probably think I was going to call in the cavalry or something. Sure, I probably would have before, but at that point I was just tired of it all. I just wanted to go home, and I didn't dislike anyone in the gang enough to call the cops on them anymore. Well, I still didn't like Cooper, but I felt like I owed him from what I said last night.

I was just sitting there trying to figure out what to do when, out of the corner of my eye I saw the door to the adjoining room crack open. Bentley caught my eye and waved, motioning at Sly and putting a finger to his lips, then gesturing for me to follow him out of the room.

Curious and more than a little pleased to not have to sit awkwardly in the room doing nothing, I followed him. Murray was still asleep, but Bentley and I headed out into the hallway quietly, closing the door.

"Thought you might be up," He said before I could even open my mouth, "I was going to head downstairs for something to eat and thought you might want to join me."

My stomach answered that for me with a loud growl that Bentley, bless his saintly turtle heart, completely ignored.

The breakfast fair was a mixture of familiar and completely foreign things to me. I didn't tend to trust anything in a buffet that wasn't baked, so I found myself a bagel and some little cheesecake brownie muffin things that were probably grossly unhealthy and a glass of apple juice before sitting down with Bentley. He had oatmeal, fruit, and milk. I honestly couldn't find it in me to be surprised.

"So, how'd it go with Sly last night?" He asked casually, once I had a nice mouthful of muffin to choke on.

I downed half my apple juice trying not to die, "How did you know about that?"

He shrugged, spearing some kind of melon with his fork, "I had a little talk with him while you were in the shower."

I put my head in my hands and groaned, not looking up at him, "Please don't tell me you told him to be nice because if you did that makes this five times worse."

"Why, what happened?"

"He _was_ nice. Well, sorta. And then I totally put my foot in my mouth."

I told him the story. At the end, the look he gave me was the same kind of look I got from my dad when I failed my French class.

"You're an idiot."

"And a bad person." I agreed, picking at the paper shell of one of my muffins. "Now that we've established that, what do I do about it?"

"Apologize," Bentley said immediately. "Don't make a speech of it or anything, but he will not bring it up, he'll just seethe about it. Which will make it so much worse in the long run."

"Thanks, that's comforting." But I didn't have time to offer a different idea because suddenly Cooper was slipping into the seat beside Bentley with a cup of coffee, looking more than a little irate.

"You could have left a note," He grumbled into his mug, "I thought Jinx had slipped off to call the cops."

"Uh, rude. My name is not Jinx and I'm sitting right here." He looked over at me, with an expression I couldn't name, as his eyebrow began an incredulous upward climb. I quickly switched gears, "But that's neither here nor there. I'm sorry for epically putting my foot in my mouth last night, please accept this muffin as a gesture of solidarity."

There was a split second of awkward, but then Bentley snorted into his milk and Cooper rolled his eyes and swiped the muffin, which I decided to assume was his emotionally stunted way of accepting my emotionally stunted apology.

Well, at least we could end this crazy vacation on a positive note.

Bentley cleared his throat and turned to Cooper, "So what exactly happened with Raleigh?"

The raccoon shrugged, inhaling his coffee, "We fought, I won, he did his generic villain monologue- I may have defeated him, but I'm no match for his villainous cohort, Muggshot, blahblahblah, a snake couldn't slither into Mesa City without setting off an alarm, meaningless threat, etcetera."

"Wow, seriously?" I asked, tearing my bagel into little pieces, "I thought those sorts of speeches only happened in comics and video games."

"Yeah well Raleigh grew up spoiled rotten and became a pirate because he thought it'd be fun, I think we've established he has a flair for the dramatic."

"True," I muttered, dragging one of my bagel pieces through the cream cheese on my plate. "Still, is melodrama a requirement to villainy?"

"Well as a friend once told me, the frailty of genius is that it requires an audience," Cooper glanced to Bentley at that and, seeing the turtle had his head in his hands, nudged him with an elbow. "What's your problem?"

Bentley's hands slid down his face as he groaned, "Seriously?"

"What?"

"_Seriously?_"

Cooper glanced at me with a raised eyebrow as if to say 'is he making sense to you?' I shrugged my confusion at him.

Bentley seemed about three seconds away from beating his head against the table and to hell with societal norms. "You just detailed our next move. Out loud. At the breakfast table."

Cooper got it before me, which was slightly painful for my pride, but to be fair, I think it speaks well of my character that I didn't understand at first. He groaned. "Oh man, seriously?"

"What? What are you two talking about?" And then I got it. And threw my last piece of bagel at Cooper, "Seriously? _Seriously_?!"

"Okay," he said, catching the bagel out of the air because among everything else of course he had to be a freaking _ninja_, "in my defense, it's not like you even thought of turning us in."

"Well, duh, that's because Bentley would do terribly in prison."

"It true." The turtle agreed with his head in his hands.

"You just _had_ to go blabbing," I accused, jabbing Cooper in the ribs with the dull end of the knife I'd gotten for my bagel, "I do _not_ want to go to Utah with you."

"I was just going to leave her in front of the Tower of London," Bentley groaned.

I felt my eyes start to twitch. I let my head drop to the table, "I hate everything."

Cooper took that opportunity to rub the bagel he'd snatched out of the air into my hair.

* * *

To my eternal dismay, I spent most of my first visit to England staring at the inside of my motel room. The official reason was that I was far too recognizable, which was true, but it was also true that I'd try to go sightseeing if I could get out of sight of the gang for half a second and the sights were where the most security was. It was would kind of be hard to not be noticed there.

This led to a truly spectacular amount of time playing cards. Mostly with Bentley, because he didn't really go out unless he had a reason, but sometimes with Murray and occasionally with Sly.

Games with Cooper got really intense really fast and it was ridiculous when he came back from an excursion with Bentley and Murray one day and instead of betting with our usual poker chip substitutes that I'd made (various origami figures fashioned from hotel stationery), he dumped a bag on the ground and wanted to bet with the crown jewels.

I think the fact that I absolutely lost it freaking out that he'd stolen the crown jewels kept him entertained for the rest of the week.

At some point, a small duffel appeared by my bed and, as the week progressed, filled up with various articles of clothing and, glory hallelujah, a couple of pairs of shoes. Most of the stuff was generic, just T-shirts and jeans sort of things, but at one point a pair of Vans colored like the Union flag appeared and I just laughed and laughed.

Cooper turned out not to be so bad. Sure, about 75% of the time he was teenage angst buried underneath ten feet of arrogance, cynicism, and wit, but the remaining time he could actually be charming and sometimes downright friendly, which I was starting to see more of now that I no longer was the one responsible for my continued presence.

We weren't exactly friends, considering that most of the time I wanted to punch him in the face, but I got where I could tolerate him, at least.

It was all that could be reasonably hoped for, I felt.

It was also something I was valiantly trying to remember as I stared him down, arms crossed and glaring. "No."

He rolled his eyes, "You say 'no' like we're giving you a choice."

"Sly," Bentley admonished in what I liked to think of as his 'parent' voice. I liked Bentley much more than Cooper, Bentley and I were buds. That is, I liked him until he turned the Voice on _me_, "Kaia, it's only logical."

"How is this logical?" I asked, throwing my hands up in the air. "How did my life get to the point where me spending the day _drugged_ is the logical choice?!"

"You know, your voice gets screechy when you're riled." Cooper said archly, forcing me to throw one of my shoes at his head.

Murray sat near Bentley, looking like he wasn't sure if he should be upset we were fighting or pleased we were getting along, the poor sap.

"Think about it," Bentley said, the Voice not wavering one bit even as Cooper stumbled behind him, clutching his shoulder where my shoe had impacted, "We need to go to our hideout, it's the place best equipped for me to do research. You can't know where our hideout is, not unless you want this situation to be semi-permanent."

"So blindfold me or something, I don't care," I grumbled, trying to figure out how to get my shoe back without being too obvious about it and, thus, prompting Cooper to run off with it to parts unknown.

"We don't trust you to keep the blindfold on," Cooper shrugged like, 'you should totally spend the day drugged in the back of my van, that isn't psychotic at all'.

I could have suggested that they also tie me up to avoid the whole drugged thing, but I honestly wasn't sure what the lesser of two evils was.

I stared at them. They stared at me. It occurred to me that I was beyond outnumbered and I felt my eyes start to twitch as I pointed at Cooper, "No drawing on my face."

"Wouldn't dream of it." He said, the epitome of innocence, which didn't make me feel better _at_ _all_.

* * *

"You drool in your sleep," was the first thing I heard upon waking up. Seeing as how this was me, I immediately flailed in the direction of the voice in the urge to do violence and dumped myself off the couch and onto the floor.

I groaned loudly, trying to drown out the laughter, "I hate you."

"I know you do." But then Cooper turned out not to be a complete jerk because he grabbed a handful of the back of my shirt and hauled me up, which was extremely helpful since I wasn't sure which of my bits were still connected to me.

Effing _drugs_.

"I'm just gonna say 'no' next time, screw you all very much," I grumbled once I'd been deposited back on the couch, squeezing my eyes shout.

"I kept Sly from drawing on your face," Murray piped up from nearby.

I pointed in his vague direction, "You're my favorite."

"Does anyone want to hear what I found out about Muggshot?"

I squinted at the blurry shape of Bentley, sitting at a desk to my left. "If you drugged me for X amount of hours so you could do an hour of research, there will be a reckoning."

He waved away my announcement, "You have no idea how long we've been here."

"And that's not creepy at all, nope."

Sly flopped down on the couch next to me, throwing an arm over my shoulders, "Come on, you're almost as paranoid as Bentley."

"Remove your arm or I shall bite."

He did, then promptly kicked his feet up and dropped them in my lap. I yelped and tried to push them off, but his boots weighed a metric ton and I still didn't have full control of my rather flaily arms.

Cooper laughed, "You're like a tiny kitten!"

"Get off! I'm going to stab you in the eye with a rusty nail!"

He actually reached out and patted my head, "Teeny, tiny, squeaky kitten."

I did the only thing I felt could reasonably be expected of me. I bit him. It was possible I had a genetic condition that predisposed me to violence when I didn't get the last word.

"I'm glad you guys are getting along better." Murray said with a sunshine and rainbows grin after I detached myself and Cooper made a few choice remarks about rabies shots, which... what?

Before I could ask what he was on about, Bentley interrupted, "_Anyway_, back to our target? The sooner we make a plan, the sooner we can leave."

"I am on board with this plan!" I said, spitting out some blood.

"So what's Muggshot's deal, Bentley?" Cooper asked, going for nonchalant as he sank into the couch, but anyone with eyes could see the way his shoulders tensed up at the thought of one of his dad's killers.

"Self-made gangster," Bentley answered instantly. "Grew up watching mobsters on the big screen. He was the runt of the litter and had a problem with bullies growing up, so he decided to be just like his heroes and demand respect at the point of a gun. He's the Fiendish Five's muscle and is holed up in Mesa City, Utah."

"Always wanted to go there," the raccoon responded with a slow grin that didn't quite reach his eyes, "Been a while since we've been in the U.S. anyway."

"Fantastic," I interrupted. "Don't suppose you guys could drop me off in New York?"

"On our way _out_ of the country, maybe."

"Stellar," I grumbled, crossing my arms and settling in the couch for a good sulk.

Then, of course, because he was a jerk, Cooper decided tickling me was an excellent idea.

It was _war_.

* * *

Getting back into the states was an exercise in subterfuge. Bentley apparently had a contact that was teaching him to forge passports and we were using the master's creations for this particular venture.

Yup, even me. Bentley had some sort of weird dust that turned whatever it touched a different color so with that and the aid of some contacts, I became a grey-furred, brown-eyed wolf. It was freaky looking in the mirror and seeing _that_, but it was true that without the crazy color of my eyes, I didn't look too much like a hybrid. Sure, you could still tell, but only if you knew what to look for.

All this was necessary because we had to fly. Theoretically, I'm sure Bentley could have rigged something with a boat, but I'm also sure he valued his sanity enough not to try and stick the four of us on a boat together for a prolonged voyage.

So flying it was. This was only slightly better in my mind than sailing and that was because I had a stupid fear of heights. Flying in a plane wasn't too bad, because it felt pretty dang solid under your feet and the windows were small, but I would still get pretty bad vertigo if I looked outside and turbulence was a personal sort of hell.

The airport was fun because I got to do something illegal with no fear of consequence. If any of the security personnel got suspicious, I could pretend to be relieved they'd discovered me. So I had fun with it and did my best to ignore Cooper's hovering. Bentley and Murray might trust me not to throw them under the bus, but Cooper hadn't quite gotten there yet.

I wasn't going to throw them under the bus, though. Truth to tell, I liked them fine and, while the situation thus far was annoying at times, it wasn't like I'd actually had any plans for my summer break and making a tour of the U.S. and Europe certainly wasn't a bad one.

Besides, the gang wasn't like any other criminals I'd ever met. They treated their disregard of the law almost casually, but still had a fair amount of respect for law enforcement and they only went after master criminals because, as Cooper put it, how else could you prove you were a Master Thief? Also, stealing from the layperson was apparently boring.

I didn't spend too much time thinking on whether their particular crime of choice was actually _wrong_, all things considered. I probably could come up with a pretty good case either way, having grown up with an FBI agent for a father, but I didn't want to look too closely at my situation, not when I was just starting to have fun.

So I didn't cause any scenes in any airports or on the plane and, thankfully, was pretty distracted during the flight because my seatmate was a single mother with a small child who thought my hair was pretty much the best toy ever.

I'd never been around kids much, but I was able to fumble through well enough to let the poor, frazzled-looking mom take a nap. Really all I had to do was let the young sugar glider play with my braid. Somehow he seemed to equate it to his tail, which was longer than his entire body. The whole thing was stupidly endearing and I was well and truly distracted for the entirety of that first flight.

The rest of the gang was all on the plane somewhere, but splitting up was part of the plan and I wasn't about to go looking for them.

After a while, the flights sort of started to blur together. Every now and again, I'd start to doze off, only to have someone jostle me awake when it was time to switch flights.

I sort of felt like a zombie, shuffling from gate to gate and seat to seat, only grabbing a couple of hours here and there and having my ears thoroughly abused by the pressure changes until it felt like they were full of water.

Cooper took pity on me during a short layover for the flight that would be taking us to Utah and dragged me to an in-airport Starbucks. I was so out of it that I just glanced at the menu and ordered the first thing I saw, which was, thankfully, an iced latte.

A few minutes later, I was sitting with Sly at a table by a massive window that looked out over the air strip and feeling slightly more human now that I'd had a few sips of coffee and was halfway through a piece of pound cake that I definitely hadn't bought for myself. Come to think of it, I hadn't paid for the coffee either. Oh well, free food.

"You don't travel often, do you?" The thief asked with a slight smirk, taking a long, pointed sip of his black coffee.

I shrugged, "Very rarely. I don't get out much."

"Yeah, I could tell _that_ from the second I met you."

I flicked my straw wrapper at him.

* * *

Younger Sly and Kaia are very fun to throw together, I must admit. Very reactive. I hope you enjoyed! Feel free to check out the blog for story extras and I'll see you in a couple of weeks!


	4. The One With The Overreaction

Sorry I'm late! I'm really busy this week and posting this just kept slipping my mind!

I hope you enjoy!

* * *

We reached the outskirts of Mesa City as the sun set, which was good because I didn't have the highest heat tolerance in the world and it was the middle of June. There was something to be said for dry heat over humid heat, and that was that it was highly preferable, but it was still way, _way_ too hot.

"Same drill as last time," Bentley said, once Murray had parked the van out of sight. I'd asked Bentley how on Earth he'd gotten the van to the states, but he wouldn't answer, so I just assumed it had involved a lot of bribery, "Sly goes in, we monitor from here and provide resources and intel as needed."

Cooper looked way too happy for someone about to head into mob territory. His energy level had risen as the sun set and he'd been doing stretches in the back of the van for the last half hour to warm his muscles up. It would probably have been distracting if I weren't so miserable. Note to self, even if you have motion sickness meds you should never _ever_ try reading in a moving vehicle.

Point being, when the raccoon finally slipped out the back doors of the van, I went with him. The fastest way to get rid of motion sickness is to stand on solid ground, after all.

Unfortunately, the parking space Murray had chosen was far, far too close to the edge of a cliff for my liking.

I thought Cooper was going to sprain something laughing when I turned green and dropped to the ground at the sight of the drop. I would have chewed him out, but I was too busy trying to control my breathing.

He crouched in front of me, "Are you seriously afraid of heights?"

"I'm gonna push you off the side here in a second." It's difficult to get a decent threat out when you can barely breathe.

"You know, the sunset is lovely out over the canyon."

I kicked dirt at him and he laughed and headed for the massive gate that proclaimed Mesa City's presence to the entire desert. I sat on the red rock for a while and looked out at the sky which, to be fair, was _really_ pretty. Besides, the rock was warm and eased muscles that had tensed up from my afternoon trying not to lose my lunch in the back of the van.

I headed back inside the van eventually because I could hear Bentley talking and I was curious. I hadn't mentioned it to the gang, but I _had_ read up on Muggshot before. I'd read up on most of the Fiendish Five, even though there was next to no information on whoever that 'Clockwerk' guy was. And really, I found myself firmly on the side of the gang in this instance. Muggshot deserved whatever Sly did to him, frankly.

This was a position I'd never be able to mention to my father.

"So what's up?" I asked, pulling my legs inside and slamming the van doors behind me.

Bentley frowned at the screen in front of him, "It's weird, and not in a good way. Mesa City is supposed to be loud, busy, crowded. This place is more like a ghost town."

"Really?" I settled myself next to him and folded my legs, "Is there any reason why?"

He shrugged, drumming his fingers rapidly along the side of his laptop as he thought, "At first I thought that maybe there'd been some sort of disaster, but it doesn't look like it. From what I can figure, Muggshot either bought up or bullied the deeds for all the property in the city. He's turned the place into his own personal mob movie."

"Guy sounds like he needs therapy," I muttered distractedly as I watched Cooper finally arrive at the city proper.

Bentley seemed to be thinking along the same lines, thumbing the switch on his microphone as soon as the camera showed a clear view of the city square, "This Muggshot certainly isn't shy." He said, upon seeing the giant neon sign proclaiming the criminal's name, "We know he's here somewhere, but how are we supposed to find him? Mesa City is a big place."

"_Given that he's a bulldog..._" Sly zoomed in on the large building he stood in front of, "_Seems only reasonable to assume that he'd want to live in a giant fire hydrant._"

"That's racist." I said, accidentally interrupting whatever sarcastic thing Bentley was going to say.

"You're_ racist_!" The raccoon chirped in return. Bentley sighed and dropped his head into his hands.

"Children, please."

"_Sorry, Bentley_." Sly and I said in unison, then stared at each other in horror as Bentley tried and failed to hide his evil-brainwashing-villain smirk.

"Right. So. How are you planning to break into the base of that building?"

The thief hummed thoughtfully, using his binocucom to have a look around the square. The shot zoomed in on a car, chained thoroughly up. The smirk in his voice was obviously when he said, "_Oh, I'll think of something._"

As the connection broke, Bentley and I exchanged long-suffering looks.

"I'll look up directions to the nearest hospital," the turtle muttered, letting his fingers dance lightly over his keyboard.

* * *

I huffed, not even bothering to lift my chin from where it rested on my folded arms.

Sly was ransacking a casino in town, Bentley was decoding the clues from said casino, and Murray was outside stretching or something because he was apparently going to help out on the next job.

Put plainly, I'd had nothing to do for far too long.

I prodded at Bentley's elbow half-heartedly, "Bentley, I'm _bored_."

He gave me a very clear 'well what do you expect _me_ to do about that?' look. I just stared at him, trying my very hardest to look pathetic and miserable and not to blink.

The turtle rolled his eyes and shuffled around some of the papers he had out, handing me a map and some photos I assumed he'd hijacked a satellite to acquire. "You want something to do? Help me with this. Here," he jabbed one part of the map, "is the gate into the area where they're keeping the key Sly and Murray will be going for. Here," he pointed at the other side of the map, "is where the key actually is. What I need you to do is make a path from point A to point B that is least likely to get Murray killed. Sly will be covering him with a turret from here."

I raised my eyebrow at the word 'turret', but didn't comment, taking the papers instead. I'd pretty much stopped being surprised by Bentley's resources at this point.

Commandeering the lid of a Tupperware container full of cords to serve as my desk, I absentmindedly stuck the end of the pencil Bentley had given me in my mouth and started pouring over the various papers in front of me.

I wasn't really too stressed about making sure I did a super good job because I was about ninety-eight percent sure Bentley had just thrown this stuff at me to keep me from annoying him, but I would take what entertainment I could get at this point.

It was kind of like a puzzle. A weird puzzle with real world, explode-y consequences.

It kept me busy for half an hour, though, so there's that to be said for it.

When I was done, I tapped Bentley on the shoulder and handed him the papers. It felt oddly similar to handing my dad my report card.

He glanced at it quickly, confirming my suspicion that he'd just given me the job to keep me from bothering him, but then paused and did a double take, looking it over more slowly.

Then, he pushed his headset down to hang around his neck and turned back to me, "Explain your logic."

* * *

Sly breathed a sigh of relief as Murray reached him safely. Sure, he knew they were pretty much home free as soon as Murray reached the key, but that hadn't stopped him from following the hippo with the sights of the turret until he was safely out of the train yard.

"Nice run, pal," he said with a grin, clapping his friend on the shoulder and taking the key, "Couldn't have done it without you."

Murray smiled shyly back, rubbing the back of his neck, "Aw, it was all Bentley, he's the one that told me the path to take."

"Well then thanks to you too Bentley," Sly said into his binocucom, spinning the key around his cane. He was in a good mood, things were going really well.

"If you're gonna thank me, be sure to thank Kaia too. She was bored, so I put her to work, she's the one that came up with the route. She's craftier than we gave her credit for."

Both Sly's train of thought and his good mood came to a screeching halt at this declaration, but Bentley continued right on, oblivious to the raccoon's meltdown.

"Anyway, I'm going to set up a satellite dish on this rock outcropping, it'll hopefully help me get a good look at the higher levels of Muggshot's hideout. Murray, if you want to head on back, Kaia's been bugging me for food for awhile now and I'm pretty sure there's a hotdog place not too far from here."

"Awesome! I'm on my way! See ya later, Sly!"

And the thief just stood there as the connection ended and Murray ran off because it felt like his brain had broken a little.

It was one thing to not be outright malicious to Jinx, it wasn't her fault anymore that she was stuck with them, but it was another _entirely_ to bring her in on planning a job!

Anger and incredulity were warring in Sly's head. How could Bentley do that without talking to him first? Besides, just because she wasn't actively calling the cops on them didn't mean she was trustworthy. How could she be trusted with their lives just like that?

He still wasn't sure she wasn't planning anything and before he knew what he was doing, he was taking off after Murray.

* * *

I wasn't much of a fan of hot dogs myself, but a mediocre understanding of American culture dictated that just because a place was a hot dog stand didn't mean it only sold hot dogs, so I tagged along with Murray in the hopes of some cheesy fries, or at least a soda and some chips.

Yeah, probably should have thought through the fact that the entire city was populated solely by the _mob_.

It didn't help that Murray was about 6'4" and looked like he could be a fighter. He _wasn't_, he was more like an overgrown five-year-old, but he looked like he could be.

I was pretty sure that the guys who approached Murray and I as we sat at a picnic table waiting for our food were intending some kind of fight, but somehow the conversation became about cars. I wasn't really following it, I was peering around the group and trying to figure out if that really _was_ a Mariachi band over there.

It was, by the way.

The guys came over with that generic pleasantry that anyone who's ever been bullied would recognize as 'DANGER DANGER BACK AWAY', but Murray was just so goshdarn enthusiastic about his van when it came up that, rather than challenging him to a fight, they challenged him to a race.

Which was, y'know, good for the fact that I was pretty sure I wouldn't be able to avoid the fight and, standing at 5'5" and surrounded by thugs, I was fairly certain I wouldn't be much help either.

But a race? Really? I didn't know how fast the van was, but I wouldn't put money on it in a race.

At least, that was what I thought before the entire Mariachi band piled into one convertible, an old vintage, purple car pulled up next to them, and even a freaking ambulance with flashing lights. Then I pretty much just wondered if someone had slipped a hallucinogen into my Slurpee.

"_Murray!_" I jumped when the binocucom station lit up, I didn't even know it got power if it was separated from Bentley. "_What's going on down there?_"

"Sly!" Murray tried to twist around to look at the station, but since he was still driving, I quickly just picked up the mic and held it up so he could talk into it. "We just stopped by this hot dog stand for a snack and the next thing we know, we're being challenged to a race by these gangster dogs!"

Sly was obviously watching us from somewhere high up, but I had no idea where. His eyes were flicking all over place, like he was thinking really hard about something before he asked, sort of strangled, "_Is there a key in it for the winner?_"

"Yeah," Murray seemed to follow his friend's logic, "Three times around the track.

Cooper nodded sharply, "_It's all you man. If you can get any of those nitro cans around the track, they'll give the van a boost._"

"And how are we supposed to get the nitro mid-race?" I interrupted, "I sincerely doubt that unless it makes the van fly, it'll be worth stopping for."

"_Some vehicles are equipped specially to pick them up, but Bentley's only gotten around to putting a loading port for them in the van. So I guess you're just gonna have to hang out the back of the van and pick 'em up as you go._"

I honestly could not tell if he was kidding or not. I narrowed my eyes at him, "You just want me to fall out and get run over."

"_Yes, that's totally it._"

There was not nearly enough sarcasm in that sentence for me to be comfortable. The raccoon grinned with all his teeth.

"_Pretty sure there's a harness somewhere in the back if you're that worried about it._"

The connection ended and I had less than a minute to decide what I wanted to do

On the one hand, the sane part of my brain that dealt with self-preservation and breathing and stuff wanted me to sit shotgun and freak out with Murray. On the other, the emotional part of my brain was seething and I had no idea why. That part wanted me to give Cooper the metaphorical finger, strap myself into the van, and hang out the back doors.

Unfortunately, impulsivity had sort of been the theme for the last week.

I grimaced at the mic in my hand before replacing it and tearing up the floorboards to get to the compartments underneath.

Sure enough, I located a harness and a length of rope.

"Here," I handed one end of the rope to Murray, "Hold this."

"I need two hands to drive!"

Of course he did.

"Then tie it to the steering wheel or something," I frowned down at the tangle of heavy fabric in my hands, "Now, how does this thing work?"

* * *

Sly watched from his vantage point, perched on the edge of a fence, one hand curled around the wood at his feet.

This whole situation was making him uneasy even before Jinx unwittingly took herself on an _actual_ job. Hopefully she'd just stay out of the way while Murray drove and they could keep her far, far away from any jobs in the future.

Which, of course, meant that one of the back doors of the van swung open as soon as the massive vehicle pulled up to the starting line.

He was able to make out a smudge of grey, but when he pulled out his binocucom for a closer look and recognized Jinx, crouched in the opening with one hand on the door and the other stretched out over the dirt road, he gaped.

He hadn't been _serious_!

Apparently, that didn't matter, because the whistle blew and the cars took off.

* * *

I may have gotten terrible motion sickness and I may have been afraid of heights, but for some reason I got a thrill when the Murray floored it.

Maybe it was because I could feel the air whipping past us and hear the van tearing over the dirt road, but it was probably the adrenaline. I'd never thought of myself as an adrenaline junkie, but I might have to start.

"On the right!" Murray called.

I scooted to my left and flattened myself to the floorboards, reaching one arm out the door and towards the track. The wheel of the van was throwing up dirt and small rocks, but they didn't hurt enough when they hit my arm that I couldn't ignore them, so I did.

At the first flash of red, I threw my arm out.

My fingers skimmed the top of the can, but I couldn't catch a grip on it. I swore to myself as we drove away from it and called back to Murray, "Barely missed it!"

"Another one coming down the middle!" was my answer.

This one fell neatly into my palm and stayed there.

"Got it!" I said, lunging over to deposit it into Murray's waiting hand.

"Great!" he hollered as we finished off the first lap, "Two more to go!"

I got back in position.

* * *

The racetrack was made up of turns, some long curves and some sharp 180s. Sly couldn't see a single completely straight tract of dirt and even if he could, the track was so uneven that it wouldn't have mattered.

The amount of airtime some of the racers were getting would have been really entertaining if Jinx wasn't hanging out the back of the van. It was like she gloried in tempting fate.

Which, come to think of it, was probably true.

Her nickname was getting more and more apt.

He'd just barely finished that thought when the van careened over a large bump and lifted at least a foot off the ground.

Jinx had been hanging out the back to grab an upcoming can and went flying.

* * *

The split second of weightlessness was actually fun before I realized what was happening.

I flung my arms out purely on instinct to find something to grip as my body plummeted toward the track. The harness around my chest and shoulders snapped taut, keeping me from falling any farther out of the van and my feet and legs caught on the floorboards inside it.

My left hand found purchase on the inside of the open door and my right fingertips caught at the other, leaving my body suspended between three not especially strong points.

My muscles were screaming at me, but to listen to them would mean to fall out of the van and get road hauled seeing as how I was still attached to the harness. Instead, I gritted my teeth, flexed muscles that were far too weak for this sort of thing, and _pulled_.

I tumbled backward and thought I was home free until Murray took a sharp turn and the van's back door slammed shut- or would have if my arm hadn't been in the way.

I'd broken my arm once, when I was little and took gymnastics. My mom had enrolled me in the course because, as such a weirdly proportioned hybrid, she hoped the flexibility training would help me learn how my specific body was supposed to move. She was right, it had helped tremendously, but when I first started the classes my balance was so bad that by the third week I took a header off the balance beam and landed on my left arm wrong.

The pain then and the pain now were surprisingly similar, in spite of the near decade between incidents, with two major differences: first, it was my right arm and not my left, and second, I hadn't heard bone snapping.

I'd just yanked my arm back and cradled it to my chest when Murray practically slammed on the brakes, nearly starting the whole process over again.

"We won!"

* * *

Sly made it back to their camp first solely by virtue of being very determined.

Leaning against the rock outcropping where Bentley was configuring his 'parabolic dish', the raccoon felt his fingers drum a nervous rhythm against the fur of his arm.

He wasn't even sure why he was so out of sorts, he just knew he was a tight, uncomfortable coil of energy and could barely fake the appropriate enthusiasm when Murray pulled up and immediately stumbled out of his van to show off the key he won. The second the hippo ran off to show Bentley, Sly was crossing around to the back of the van.

Jinx's feet barely touched the dusty ground before he had handfuls of her shirt and was crowding her back against the now-closed van doors.

She let out an odd-sounding yelp that he ignored in favor of invading her personal space and glaring right into her eyes. She must have ditched the contacts at some point because they were a bright, vibrant green so light it was practically gold.

"What are you doing?" he growled, feeling his fists press into her collarbone as he pushed probably harder than was strictly necessary.

Her eyes were wide and surprised for all of two seconds before they narrowed into annoyed, _angry_ slits, "What am _I_ doing? You're the one who decided to assault me after I _helped_ your little gang! _Twice_!"

"Exactly!" The thief resisted the urge to give her a good shake, "_Why_? Why are you helping?"

"Oh for the love of- Is _that_ what's got your panties in a twist?" The hybrid beat her head backwards against the van twice, "I _felt like it_, okay?!"

"No, it's not okay! No one helps for no reason!" Sly felt his fingers tighten around the fabric he had such a hard grip on it was nearly painful. Some part of his brain dimly realized that this was a shirt he'd bought for the hybrid himself. It was pale green and boasted a picture of the Eiffel tower, he'd bought it just to see if she would wear it, it was more feminine than anything he'd seen her express interest in before. But she was wearing it now; there were still crease marks in it from the harness she'd used in the race not even an hour ago.

Jinx rolled her eyes so hard he was curious if she could actually sprain an eye-rolling muscle, "Okay, the first time I was bored, the second time I just wanted to, okay? That's all there is to it, I definitely didn't think as hard about this as you are. Now could you _please_ let go?"

It was the 'please' that caught his attention more than anything.

Sly blinked, feeling the anger and confusion and suspicion roll off him like water. There was something off about Jinx's expression.

He took a step back, but didn't let go, and looked her over. She was leaning against the van more than standing under her own power and her face had that loose quality, like she was far too distracted to worry about what expression she currently had.

He'd seen it before and recognized it as something he'd always thought of as 'too much pain, must cut some corners'.

His eyes zeroed in on her left arm, which was being clutched by her right in a death grip.

Without his consent, his fingers uncurled until they released the fabric of the hybrid's shirt and came up to instead clutch her shoulders firmly, but gently, "What's wrong with your arm?"

Jinx's eyes darted sideways and she licked her lips, "It got slammed in the door toward the end of the race."

Really, Sly couldn't do anything but open the back door of the van and have her sit on the edge while he went to go get Bentley, who was the only one on the gang with any first aid training.

As he walked away, he shuddered and ran a hand through his hair as a deep sense of shame and guilt settled in his chest. He hadn't exploded like that since he was fifteen. Hell, Jinx was only fifteen. And he'd gone off on her like she was one of his targets.

Biting his lip, he looked over his shoulder at her. She wasn't looking at him at all, she was staring down at her injured arm, running her fingertips over where it probably hurt the worst, squeezing her hand into a small fist over and over, mouth twisted into a pensive frown, like she was trying to figure out whether or not it was broken all on her own.

Clenching his jaw, he started to climb the outcropping. The sooner he reached Bentley, the sooner the turtle could help Jinx.

Then he could focus on finding some sort of way to apologize.

* * *

Sorry again about being late this week! Feel free to check out the blog and I'll see you in a couple of weeks!


	5. The One With The Reconcilliation

Hello, all! Uploading a few hours early this week because I am all the tired. Work on the sequel to Nightingale Syndrome is progressing slowly but surely! Hopefully It'll be ready to go early next year!

Enjoy the chapter!

* * *

"Aren't you supposed to use ice?" I asked as Bentley placed two hot water bottles on either side of my arm and then proceeded to mummify the whole thing.

"Well," he said, reaching for another handful of cloth strips, "Ice reduces swelling by constricting the blood vessels and reducing blood flow to the injury. Heat expands the vessels so the blood can reach the area more freely. Some people say to alternate heat and ice, but most professional athletes say heat-"

"Bentley, I've stopped listening to you."

"I figured as much," he said with a smile, carefully tying off the last strip. "That too tight?"

"I just hope I still have an arm under here somewhere," I answered honestly, poking at the giant wrap of towels. "Is this all really necessary?"

"Well, since your arm isn't actually broken, no. If you want to just tough it out, that's your prerogative, but this way will be much more comfortable."

"Okay, point taken." I said, maneuvering the whole mess into a makeshift sling, "Thanks."

He glanced over at the binocucom station, where we could both clearly see Sly bust his way into Muggshot's casino, "No problem. Now, you want to tell me what happened between you and Sly?"

I grimaced, "Not really? And how do you know that?"

"I've known Sly for the past ten years, if I couldn't pick up that something had happened, I could hardly call myself a decent friend." He tossed me a water bottle and a couple of pain killers, "Spill."

I sighed, leaning back against the side of the van, "I dunno Bentley. Just when I think he might be an okay, decent guy, he throws me up against the van and demands to know why I'm helping you. It's like he's bipolar or something."

"He has his moments," Bentley muttered with a grimace, "How mad was he, exactly?"

"Mad enough that I'm gonna be bruised in the morning. It was weird though. I don't think he was necessarily mad at me, I dunno." I ran a hand through my hair, "Does that make sense?"

"Yeah, you were just a really convenient target," the turtle sighed, "Sly has a lot of old anger. It occasionally flares like this. I thought it was getting better, though."

I meant to shrug, but instead found myself saying, "He was worried. He seemed more pissed that he couldn't figure out why I was helping you that anything. Like I might turn you in still."

Bentley slowly nodded to himself, "Yes, that makes sense. If there's something Sly has in spades, it's protective instinct."

I was going to ask what he meant by that when the binocucom station chirped- Cooper was inside Muggshot's casino.

"Would you look at that ugly mug?" Were the first words out of his mouth as soon as Bentley made the connection; a giant effigy of Muggshot's face filled the screen.

"I am," Bentley confirmed, fingers flying across his keyboard, "And I find it infinitely fascinating."

"Huh?" Sly's expression suggested he was wondering if Bentley had had a brain injury.

"My x-ray detection devices reveal that a secret elevator to Muggshot's penthouse is contained within that giant head."

"So how do we get in?"

"Behind this locked wall there's a lever that summons the elevator, but you need all seven keys to open it up."

"I'm on it," Cooper went to kill the connection, but Bentley stopped him.

"By the way, Kaia's arm isn't broken, just bruised."

I gaped at the turtle, but he kept his gaze straight ahead. I knew Cooper couldn't see me from where I was sitting, but why was Bentley taking advantage of that?

There was a heartbeat, then a firm, "Good." and the connection died.

* * *

The more Sly thought about it, the more he wanted to stop thinking about it.

The only saving grace in this situation was that he hadn't actually managed to scare Jinx. She'd been surprised for a second, then gave as good as she got, which actually made him fight a smile. As long as she wasn't scared of him, it was fine. Still, he felt he should apologize, but honestly had no idea how.

He wrinkled his nose at the smell of the back-alleys he was traversing even as Bentley commented on them.

What he needed was a distraction.

"Well, well, well, looks who's wandered into my crosshairs... Sly Cooper!"

And what a lovely distraction he'd found. He grinned to himself as he looked up to see Inspector Fox on the opposing rooftop.

Nothing was as an effective a distraction as running for his life from a beautiful woman.

Or, so he thought.

"Wow, Carmelita has terrible aim."

Sly nearly fell off the wire he was balancing on and just barely managed to dodge a shock pistol bolt, "Jinx? What are you doing?"

"Bentley left and I'm bored. Seriously, I have better aim than Carmelita and I'm not legally allowed to carry a firearm."

"And why's that?" The raccoon found himself asking, making a leap just as the platform beneath him was destroyed.

"Long story involving acorns and asphalt, you don't want to know, trust me."

"And the fact that you're, what, twelve?"

"I am fifteen, you nimrod, and you're not older than me enough to make jokes like that."

"Hey, I've got three years on you."

"Congrats. You can vote if, y'know, you wouldn't be arrested on the spot. And you were an American citizen. Wait, are you an American citizen?"

Nope, Jinx definitely wasn't scared of him. Sly grinned as he avoided yet another bolt. He'd have to make a point never to mention to Bentley that he'd been right about Sly maybe getting to where he liked the hybrid. She wasn't so bad once he allowed for the possibility that she might not be evil incarnate.

"How's the arm?" he asked after a second of silence. He was surprised he'd asked, and even more surprised when he realized it was because he didn't want her to stop talking.

"It's okay. I've had worse. Bentley taped some hot water bottles around it."

"Yeah, he does that. I used ice instead once and let's just say Bentley was smug the whole time I had a limp."

"Yeah, is Bentley secretly an evil mastermind?"

"Well," Sly said with a smile as he watched Carmelita float away on an oversized balloon, "not yet."

* * *

Something about not being a part of the gang is that when you slip out to get a Slurpee or something, the entire gang is liable to totally move right along with the plan and not wait for you to get back to do something like breaking into a mob boss's penthouse.

"What?!" I screeched, almost dumping my drink everywhere in my haste to scramble up behind Bentley. "Sly is fighting Muggshot!? Like an actual, fair fight? Is he insane?"

"I didn't realize he'd be too strong for Sly's cane!" Bentley retorted, frantically typing, "There has to be some way to stop him!"

Muggshot was not, in fact, too strong for Sly's cane, Sly just wasn't strong enough to use it in the correct way to beat him. His father had fought Muggshot and won.

I wisely decided not to mention this. Mostly because Sly's dad was freakishly strong and I didn't want Cooper deciding he needed to up the ante with weight-training or something.

Someone had to say it, "I suppose running is out of the question?"

Bentley's mouth was a grim line, "They're fenced in."

I leaned down over his shoulder to get a better look at his screen. "What's with those crystals?"

"I think they're decorative and really not my priority right now." Bentley growled, his nose almost pressed against his laptop.

An idea was flickering around the edge of my mind and solidified when I caught sight of gold at the edge of the screen.

"Are those mirrors?"

"Yes, why on Earth-" the turtle's eyes widened, "Oh. Oh!" He instantly flicked on his mic, "Sly-"

Muggshot fired a burst of bullets and Sly's binocucom went dark. There were approximately three seconds of silence.

Then panic reigned.

Murray was convinced Sly and been shot and killed, Bentley was frantically trying to bring the binocucom back online, and I started tugging at the surprisingly tight knots around my arm with my teeth.

It was that last bit that was considered odd, which was understandable under the circumstances.

"What are you doing?" Bentley hissed, clutching white-knuckled at his laptop like it could solve all of his problems if only he pleaded with it enough.

"Hey, I saved his carcass once, what's twice?" I said with a grin and bravado that hopefully covered up my trembling fingers. I knew if I started thinking about it, I'd never actually do it. But one look at the pure, unadulterated hope on Bentley's face when he caught on was enough to make me decide it was worth it.

He started scrambling through his stuff, shoving a plain binocucom in my hands as well as a holster for it before asking Murray for a tire iron.

* * *

Sly was busy running for his life, which was really becoming far too much of a theme for all he hadn't even been a career criminal for a whole year yet, when the elevator that brought him up to the penthouse dinged open.

It was so freaking surreal that it threw off his gait and he tripped over his own feet, sending a hail of gunfire that would have caught him in the back sailing harmlessly over his head instead, thank God for small favors.

He was up and running again in under a second, of course. Muggshot had to reload and that was probably what had saved his life several times so far. But Muggshot's backup may have just arrived and he turned to assess his chances of continued living and nearly tripped again.

Running parallel to him on the other side of the fence, one long streak of grey, was Jinx. She made eye contact with him, winked, and came to an abrupt halt behind one of the gold discs around the perimeter of the area.

Sly kept running because Muggshot had reloaded and really seemed to like the idea of turning him into mincemeat, but was hyper aware of exactly where he left the hybrid.

Which was why, when one of the massive crystals behind him lit up, causing both him and Muggshot to turn toward it and prompting him to realize the gold discs were mirrors and Jinx was doing something with them, he didn't even think twice about reaching out with his cane, hooking the edge of the mirror nearest him, and spinning it to face the rest of the room.

It just about blinded him, but it was the wave of heat that made him realize Jinx actually had a plan.

He couldn't help it, he grinned.

Maybe Muggshot could take a few hits from his cane without flinching, but no one's heat tolerance was that good.

He and Kaia ran around the perimeter of the fence, flipping opposing mirrors so Muggshot never knew which one of them to go after. Brawn he had. Brains, not so much.

The gangster's yelp when all the beams of light connected and zapped him was something to savor. Even better, the heat had expanded the metal his guns were made out of to the point that they were effectively ruined.

Muggshot made a break for the elevator upstairs and his spare set of guns and Sly bolted for the opposing lift.

As it activated, he thought he heard Jinx mutter, "Conveniently located second elevator, of course."

Sly had to bite his lip to keep from grinning again. He'd thought he was probably dead when his binocucom caught a stray bullet, but Bentley was a sneaky guy.

And Jinx, well. Apparently there was something to her after all.

* * *

My arm was screaming at me but hey, at least I was used to it by now.

After running around and flipping the mirrors back around to avoid turning the entire room into one very ambitious sauna, I stood very still, and watched the flashes of light climb higher and higher toward the ceiling.

Apparently there were more mirrors and crystals up there and Cooper had taken Bentley's idea and run with it. Which was good because I could see no other way he could defeat Muggshot.

And defeat him he did. Also, that villainous monologue thing was apparently catching. It carried down to me clearly because for all Muggshot's faults, his projection was oddly clear.

"-You want alla that stupid picture book? You're gonna have to go down to Haiti and cross paths with Mz. Ruby. And then believe you me- you don't wanna be you!"

The lights went out one by one as Sly headed back down the elevator, finally emerging with several stiff, yellow pages clutched in one hand.

I met him as he stepped off the lift, looking down at the pages and smoothing one corner with a thumb.

"My ancestor, 'Tennessee Kid' Cooper. Perfected the Rail Walk and the Rail Slide." He had a wry smile as he carefully tucked the pages away in his backpack, "So, I'm assuming you heard what Muggshot had to say?"

"Just that last part, but what does that have to do with anything?"

He just stared me down, obviously waiting for me to figure it out, even as a little smirk curled his lips up. When I finally got it, I very calmly made a fist and clonked myself in the forehead.

"Seriously?"

I heard him muffle a laugh before a hand landed heavy on my shoulder. It surprised me and my eyes flew open so I could stare up at him.

There was something soft in his eyes. I wasn't sure what, exactly, but I suddenly felt very small.

"Thanks for the help." That was a smile. And honest-to-God smile, nothing wry or mocking about it at all. Just grateful.

I swallowed and definitely didn't focus on how warm his hand was on my shoulder. He'd been running around a lot, it was probably totally normal, "No problem."

And that was, of course, when we heard the sirens.

* * *

Undertaking a rooftop escape with someone in tow what a very new experience that required a surprising amount of manhandling.

The cops were everywhere, so every movement became a mad dash from cover to cover. Normally, this would be exciting and fun, but when he was responsible for making sure Jinx made it from point A to point B, it was suddenly a lot more hair-raising.

Not for her sake, nothing bad would happen to her if they were caught. Maybe she wouldn't let their destination spill, but he wasn't going to risk it either way. Not here, not now, not when everything was for some reason going right.

So he yanked her around by the good hand, which she was clutching like it was the only thing she knew how to do which, given how wide-eyed she was as they tore through the city, probably wasn't too far from the truth.

A helicopter flew over head, shining down floodlights and he yanked her back into the shadow caused by an oversized chimney.

Sly stepped out after it passed, following it with his eyes to make sure it didn't loop back around for another sweep. After being sure, he turned back to Jinx... who wasn't where he left her.

He had a split second to panic before a pebble hit his shoe, directing him to look at the hybrid, who was crouched by the edge of the roof, out of sight of the street, but only just, and waving him over.

Curious, he slid over next to her. All of his attention immediately went to trying not to laugh. Muggshot was being led out in handcuffs and Carmelita was lighting into a poor local cop about how could Sly Cooper possibly have managed to escape. It was glorious.

Smirking and shaking his head, he curled a hand around Jinx's elbow, tugging her away from the edge, "C'mon, let's go."

Kaia grinned and nodded and they went.

* * *

"Is this a theme now?" I grumbled, wrestling my hair into a braid. I'd been in a fairly good mood about five seconds earlier. After leaving Mesa City in our collective dust and driving through the night for an unknown amount of hours (I slept through it, okay?) we'd arrived at yet another motel, in California this time. Changing into over-sized pajamas after an awesome shower was very nice and I'd have liked to hold onto the warm feelings rather than being told I was going to be confined to the room again.

As I said, I was sensing a theme.

Sly rolled his eyes from his bed, where he was flipping through his newly acquired pages for probably the sixty-third time, "Hey, we deserve a break."

"I deserve not to spend a week cataloguing the various symptoms of cabin fever!"

He paused, sitting up just enough to look over at me, "That's actually a real thing?"

"Well we'll find out, won't we?"

He shrugged, going back to his pages.

I flicked the rubber band I was going to use for my hair at his head.

"Well, we weren't exactly expecting you to be with us much longer," Bentley explained apologetically. "And in the US it's more likely you'll be recognized."

I sighed, giving up on my hair and flopping back onto my bed to let the last twelve hours catch up to me, "Whatever, but I demand books."

"You can borrow some of my coloring books."

"Thanks, Murray."

* * *

It was a bit annoying to be confined to the room for a week, but not nearly so much as I thought it would be. I made a list of books I wanted and they would appear whenever I wasn't looking, like the mysterious book fairy didn't want to be seen or something. As if I wasn't already sure it was Sly since neither Bentley nor Murray could move that quietly.

After a while, I started writing down other stuff on my list, just to see if I would get it.

Book that I hadn't read for five years? Appeared on the corner of the night table.

Soda that I was knew for a fact was not sold west of Texas? Perfectly chilled on a coaster on the desk.

Before I knew it, we were playing a game. I kept writing down things that were harder and harder to find and they kept appearing.

We never talked about it when the gang came back for the night, but from the smirks Sly kept shooting my way, I could tell he thought he was winning.

So I upped my game.

Carnival pretzel? Still warm on the table by the window, with bonus super-sized stuffed puppy.

Old game for an even older version of the GameBoy? Showed up in its original packaging on the windowsill.

This escalated sort of alarmingly fast. Bentley eventually put a stop to it after I started making pterodactyl-like screeching sounds upon finding a bag on my bed after writing down 'Those weird gold stars with actors' names on them'.

So yeah, Sly won, but I had enough spoils from our little game that I could barely fit them all in my duffel bag, so I felt like it evened out in the end.

* * *

After a traumatic plane ride (there had been no convenient distraction this time, so I'd had a minor meltdown in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, Sly'd had to hold my hand the rest of the way and we agreed to never speak of it ever) and an only slightly less traumatic van ride (which had forced me to just flat out ask Bentley if I could sign a blood-oath or something that I wouldn't reveal the location of their Safehouse so I could escape this ride without being drugged (the answer was 'no')), I woke up on the couch of what I was ninety-five percent sure was a train car to big brown eyes far, far too close to mine.

"Holy God, personal space!"

"Pssh, personal space is for weaklings," Sly rolled his eyes, but nevertheless backed off.

I groaned and ran a hand down my face, "What. What do you want?"

"Weee-eeeellll," he drew the word out an extra syllable, "I've been practicing the Rail Walk and Rail Slide and Bentley mentioned that it's sometimes easier to learn something if you teach it to someone."

I blinked at him, taking an embarrassingly long time to figure out what he was getting at. "Wha- me!?"

"Yup."

"Why?"

He shrugged, long, languid, and just a bit too casual. "You're the only one that can learn it. Neither Bentley nor Murray have an appropriate body type to even try."

There was something more there, clearly. But it was equally clear that I wasn't going to get a look at it, at least not right now.

I groaned, rubbing the heel of my hand against my forehead. "Let me change first."

He grinned and tossed a water bottle at me, which I caught, "See you outside."

* * *

After changing into shorts and a tank top, I went outside.

As I'd always thought, we were in the middle of a train yard. I couldn't see anything beyond, though, because we were in a sort of circle of train cars that blocked my vision.

Someone, probably all three of them, actually, had cobbled together what looked like a training course out of wood and old rails. There were curved rails slanted down, straight rails from platform to platform, it looked dangerous.

And, of course, Sly was sitting on one of the rails, loose pages of the Thievius Raccoonus clutched in one hand as he reread them for probably the millionth time. He saw me coming and perked up, putting one hand on the rail to swing down to my level.

"If you expect me to actually walk on those, you have another thing coming," I informed him, staring warily at the rails suspended five feet off the ground.

He snorted, placing the pages he held gently out of the way, "I can't say I'd ever pegged you as one to be afraid of heights."

"I'm not afraid of heights," I crossed my arms and glared, "I'm afraid of falling."

"Well, you don't have to be worried about falling because I'll catch you," Sly said, hopping up on the low end of the rail and offering me a hand, "C'mon."

I frowned, biting at the inside of my mouth before taking his hand, "That's so cheesy I actually can't come up with anything to say to it."

"Good to know that's the way to get the last word," he said with a smirk, lifting me up next to him.

I couldn't respond to that either, because I was too busy trying to find my feet, flashing back to countless gymnastics lessons with balance beams. The train rails were thinner, but it was easier than I'd thought to find that balance again.

He cocked his head to the side as I stepped away experimentally, "Huh, that was fast."

"I took gymnastics as a kid," I replied distractedly, holding my arms carefully at my sides, ready to raise them to correct if I needed to. It was times like this having a prehensile tail really helped.

"Yeah?" Sly prompted after a minute, as though he could sense there was more to the story.

"Yeah," I took a couple of careful steps backwards, "I didn't want to, it was my mom's idea. I'm crazy out of proportion, you can probably tell. My shoulders are too broad, my legs are too short- my coordination was shot all to hell when I was little. My parents were investigated about a million times because I had to go to the hospital so much because I'd be clumsy and hurt myself."

"How did gymnastics help?"

"You have to be really aware of what all the parts of you are doing in gymnastics. My mom took it when she was little, she's a hybrid too, and thought it might help me. Turned out she was right." I finally looked up at him again, "Doesn't mean I'm going to be fast on this thing, though. I hope when you say 'walk', you mean walk."

He smirked, "Nah, the Rail Walk is actually a run or jog most of the time."

"Is your death wish, like, a genetic thing?" I asked as he flipped off the rail and went to go pick up the pages again, "Because that would explain a lot."

He snorted, "This actually explains it pretty well. Have a look, you'll see what I mean."

And then, to my shock and awe, he actually handed me the pages. The pages he'd fought tooth and nail for, that had been passed down through his family for generations, he handed out to me.

Not totally sure this wasn't some kind of test, I took them carefully.

And, to my shock and awe, it actually did explain an awful lot. It explained how to position your feet and where to put your weight and how to shift it, step by step while still retaining momentum, ridiculously complex for an Old West bandit. It actually made perfect sense.

Which is why I wasn't really that surprised when, the first time I tried it, my leg cramped up and sent me into the dirt.

"I will stab you in the face," I said in the vague direction of Sly's laughter. "With a wrench. You think it can't be done, but it can. It takes a little longer, but I can do it."

He landed near-silently next to me, tugging me to my feet, "I have the utmost faith in you. Come on, let's try that again."

"No way. You said you'd catch me and you didn't."

"Come on, what's a couple of bruises between friends?"

"We're friends? When did we become friends? Why wasn't I informed of this?"

"Generally, when one person saves another person's life, friendship is assumed."

"Really? Because most of the reading I do, it usually ends with a life-debt or similar promises of eternal loyalty."

"This isn't Star Wars, I'm not swearing a life-debt to you."

"Good, I don't want you to. You probably have cooties."

Dead. Silence.

"Wait, you know Star Wars?"

Yeah, we didn't get anything done after that. We went back into the train car and Sly hauled out an old laptop and we played KOTOR together. I say 'played', there was a lot of arguing over character gender, light or dark side, whether talking to the minor characters was really worth it, etc...

It was the most fun I'd had in ages.

Okay, so maybe we could be friends.

* * *

Things are progressing between our emotionally illiterate friends! I hope you enjoyed, feel free to check out the blog, and I will see you in a couple of weeks!


	6. The One With The Turnabout

Hey, I'm actually on time for once! This would be more exciting if it were due to me planning it and not on being up so late finishing my final paper and needing something to do while my hair dried.

Either way, enjoy the chapter!

* * *

We eventually _did_ tackle the Rail Walk and Rail Slide, but only after Bentley came back and blew a gasket that we hadn't made any progress, considering he'd already booked passage to Haiti and Sly needed to learn the new techniques _yesterday_.

And if we never stopped making Star Wars references the whole time, well, who would care?

I could sort of manage the techniques, but it was a lot harder for me than Sly. _He_ improved by leaps and bounds while teaching me while I grasped the basics and that was about it. Still, he was the important one, it wasn't like _I_ was going to be out in the field.

Getting to Haiti was a whirlwind of annoyance that eventually led to me being sprawled in the back of the van trying not to be sick while Murray navigated through the uneven, twisting paths of swampland that were the only semblance of roads for miles.

Sly was actually fairly energetic, which probably had something to do with the fact that the sun had gone down an hour ago. He was currently taking great joy in my discomfort.

"How is it just riding in a car can make you this sick?" he asked with a wicked grin that made me want to vomit on his shoes.

"Bentley," I whined, curling into a tighter ball and squeezing my eyes shut, "I defer this question to you."

Bentley sighed, pausing in whatever he was typing, "Motion sickness is basically cognitive dissonance. It's the sensation of moving without actually consciously moving yourself, which is why people who get carsick can drive and be fine, but get sick if they're riding. It affects the inner ear and causes headaches, nausea, confusion, and poor balance."

"Thank you."

"Don't mention it."

"Something tells me it's poor fortune for the world that you two ever met," Sly said absently, tugging on his gloves as Murray swerved to a stop and my brain almost vacated my skull. "Try not to take over the world while I'm gone."

"What about half of it?"

The raccoon rolled his eyes and was gone.

"Is this place really called 'The Dread Swamp Path'?" I asked Bentley as he set up the binocucom station.

"I find it very appropriate," He said defensively, making me think he was the one who named it. He finally got the station working and called up Sly. "Sorry, Sly, but this is one mission you will have to accomplish without me."

"_You don't believe in ghosts, do you?_" the raccoon teased.

"Sure I do," Bentley said confidently. "My scanners have picked up verifiable paranormal activity. But that's not the problem. This swamp is _oozing_ with disgusting mold and bacteria."

With an eye roll and a dismissive snort, Sly retorted, "_Suck it up, Bentley. We've got work to do._"

"As much as I hate to admit it," I said, draping myself over Bentley's shoulder, "He's got a point. I don't think you'll be anywhere near the mold and bacteria."

"_Aw, thanks Jinx._"

"I have a name!"

"_Lies._"

"Well alright then," Bentley groused, trying to get us back on track, "Don't forget to use the move you got from Muggshot's section of the Thievius Raccoonus, especially on those slippery, moldy, disgusting vines where the bark has worn away."

"_Thanks, Bentley_," Sly drawled, closing the connection.

"So," I said, sitting back on my heels, "Ghosts? You're not serious, right?"

"Deadly." Bentley gave me a look, "This swamp is rife with paranormal activity."

"Uh-huh, sure."

* * *

Ten minutes later, I was having to re-evaluate my entire life.

"Mosquitoes! The size of people! An-and spiders! And what are those, golems?!"

"Yes actually."

I made some sort of high-pitched keening noise after trying to articulate words that, I hoped, conveyed my emotional distress.

"Sly," Murray had stolen the binocucom mic and was whispering into it, "I think we broke Kaia."

"_Do you have a receipt? Maybe we can get a refund_."

"Bad mojo force fields!?" I shrieked, "Purple candles!?" I grabbed Bentley by the shoulders and shook him, "When did this become my life?"

"Three weeks ago," He answered, pushing me away to snatch the mic back from Murray. "My paranormal scanner is maxing out on that structure there, Sly."

"_A reading like that could only be coming off Mz. Ruby herself._"

"I think you're right. If you want a crack at Mz. Ruby, you're going to have to find a way inside that skull temple."

"Stereotypes," I whispered, staring off into the middle distance. "Stereotypes everywhere."

Bentley sighed, setting the mic aside, "Are you ever going to do anything besides provide color commentary on our lives?"

"Hey, it's not my fault your lives are the equivalent of a bad sitcom. But I would like to know how that paranormal scanner works."

The turtle's eyes lit up, "Well..."

He launched into a description of the probes he'd scattered across the area via RC chopper and how he used them to detect electro-magnetic-frequencies (EMF), temperature, and a whole slew of other things that added up to paranormal activity.

Explanation or no, when he reached the end, I still sighed. "I'm still not sure I want to rewrite my worldview to include ghosts. It would be so much easier to, say, rewrite it to include spores that induce hallucinations. Disturbingly similar hallucinations. In multiple people."

Bentley gave me a pitying look. "That is more improbably than the existence of ghosts, you do realize that?"

"Leave me to my coping mechanisms, friend."

* * *

Sly was incredibly athletic, but even he could only handle so much. Running from a voodoo snake that was the size of a city block and had a taste for raccoon? That could take it out of a guy.

The keys he'd managed to steal so far clinked lightly against each other in his backpack as he hiked back to the van. The guards he'd taken out on the way in hadn't been replaced yet, which either meant they hadn't been expected to report in or Mz. Ruby was fortifying her defenses farther in.

Well, it didn't matter how much she fortified her defenses. He was coming for her.

He heard an odd shifting sound as he approached the van and looked up as he rounded the corner only to stop dead.

Jinx had a sack in her arms that may once have been huge, but was currently only half full. She had a look of intense concentration on her face as she poured something white in a complete circle around the van, about a yard from the bumper.

"What are you doing?" he asked, feeling a grin pull at his face.

She looked up and smiled, which was weird. It was a nice smile too, not like she was plotting or anything. It made his stomach swoop unsettlingly.

"I'm taking precautions," she said, mischief in her words as she completed the circle and hefted the bag in her arms. '**ROCK SALT**' was printed on the side.

"Precautions?" Sly asked, meandering toward her.

"Yeah." She swung the bag, forcing the remaining salt to settle at the bottom, and sat it next to her feet. Planting her hands on her hips, she grinned up at him. "To keep ghosts away."

_Salt_ was meant to keep ghosts away? "What, by threatening them with hypertension?"

"Got me. Bentley has a list of things, but sage isn't handy." Her eyes flicked over his shoulder and she casually reached out, grabbed a handful of his shirt, and pulled him over the salt line.

His muscles tensed with the urge to do _something_ in retaliation, but then there was the sound of a thud behind him and he looked over his shoulder.

One of the cat ghosts he'd seen everywhere was recoiling from some kind of impact.

"Ha!" Jinx sounded delighted. "It worked!" Leaning forward, she tilted her head. "Huh. Ghost."

It hissed at her. She hissed back.

Sly was still laughing over that when it hit him that this completely insane and inexplicably hilarious person _was going to leave_. It was pure chance that she'd stuck around this long and she was _going to leave_.

"No!" she pointed a finger in the ghosts face, just barely on the safe side of the salt line. "You shoo, or I will exorcise you. Don't even think I won't, I will do a Google search for an exorcism and I will exorcise your furry purple tail."

The cat hissed one more time before drifting off through a tree and only then did Jinx turned to look at him. Her triumphant expression crumpled immediately into one of confusion.

"Hey, are you okay?"

"Fine." He didn't know why it felt like he'd been kicked in the chest. He'd known she was going to leave since he grabbed her, it wasn't like this was _news_.

It was just- things were more _fun_ when she was around and he couldn't figure out why. Maybe it was because she was new? She didn't have any of the motivation the rest of them did, didn't take this search as seriously, but because of that she kind of forced them to loosen up. Maybe that was it?

"Are you sure, Sly? Because you don't look so good."

He shook his head, forced himself back into the present, and realized she was staring up at him, the ambient light of the swamp reflected in her eyes and made them seem huge in her face.

He couldn't... he needed _air_.

Reaching over his shoulder, he shoved his hand into his backpack and withdrew a handful of crumpled slips of paper, pushing them into Jinx's hands. "The clues, for Bentley. I'm just gonna-" gesturing back the way he came, he started off back down the path, suddenly filled with twitchy, nervous energy and an urge to get his hands on something that didn't belong to him.

"But you just-" he heard her start to say, before shouting after him, "Watch out for ghosts!"

* * *

"Sly's acting weird." I aimed for a casual, conversational tone of voice as I smoothed out the papers from the clue bottles and passed them to Bentley one by one.

"You're going to have to narrow it down," he informed me, not even looking up from his scrap paper. Apparently, this was a normal thing.

Murray looked up from his Gameboy. "Yeah, Sly doesn't make sense much anymore."

"But why is that?" I asked, slouching against the van wall as I rubbed out a crease in the paper with a claw. "I mean, he was just laughing earlier, but then he stopped and looked like I'd hit him over the head with a dead puppy and then he ran off. I don't get it."

Finally, Bentley looked up from his calculation, "Sly, well, he's been through a lot. I'm not just talking about when he was a kid, but that is kind of the crux of it. He puts all these expectations on himself from what he thinks his father, his entire family line, would have wanted."

I frowned, passing him another clue, "Does he even like thieving?"

"Oh yeah, don't get me wrong, he loves it." Bentley carefully lined the clue up next to the others. "It's just that... you know how you can be doing something for fun and loving it, but if someone makes you do it for a grade, or for a deadline, it makes it stressful and takes some of the fun out of it? It's like that."

I thought on that for a little while, waited until Bentley had called Sly with the new vault combination, before asking, "Do you think this, all of this, with the taking down the Fiendish Five and getting the Thievius Raccoonus back, do you think it'll help him?"

Bentley sighed, looking a lot older for a second. "I think it might help him get closure. But I also think it might leave him at a point where he's accomplished everything he wanted to and has no other goals. If it leaves him floundering, there's only so much I can do. It could give him peace or it could drive him in a bad direction."

"We're worried about him," Murray confided. He was still staring down at his Gameboy, but the sound effects from it had stopped.

I rested my head on my knee after passing Bentley the last clue. "This sucks."

"Trust me," Bentley said with a wry twist to his mouth, "We are well aware of that."

"Yeah, but, I mean, it _really_ sucks."

"Welcome to the gang, Kaia. If you have any suggestions feel free to bring them up, we need all the help we can get."

"Sly needs all the help he can get," Murray corrected. Bentley tilted his head, silently conceding the point as he continued to mess with the slips of clue paper.

"If I'm part of the gang, can I get a cut of the loot?"

"You get a cut of the loot when you start helping us steal it."

"Booo..."

The radio Bentley had altered to pick up specter frequencies started emitting a low hissing sound, which made his head snap up, bits of clue paper falling from his fingers. He scrambled to bring up a computer program he'd linked the radio to, fumbling for a set of heavy-looking headphones.

"Something's trying to contact us!" he shouted excitedly.

I exchanged a wary glance with Murray, but he didn't look the slightest bit concerned.

How the gang had survived so long with so many of their members so infatuated with dangerous things was utterly, completely beyond me.

* * *

Whacking fifty chickens for a ghost that was craving gumbo while avoiding roosters with bombs strapped to their backs was, admittedly, a little weird, even by Sly's standards.

Having a voice in his ear provide color commentary was not helping the situation.

"_How is this a viable form of security?_" Jinx was asking, sounding kind of awed, like 'wow, people are amazingly thick'. "_Those roosters are more likely to kill themselves, all the rest of the chickens, and burn down the coop than they are to explode any intruders._"

"Yeah, well, these are Mz. Ruby's chickens and she creates friends via necromancy, so this isn't her weirdest idea," Sly managed as he dove out of the way of another explosion.

"_Who is she even feeding with all these chickens, aren't her guards zombies?_" Sly didn't even think Jinx was expecting an answer as much as she was filling the dead air out of some weird compulsion. "_Also, why is the ghost scared of being exploded? He's a ghost, he's already dead._"

"Some things defy explanation." His teeth were gritted because he was already outrunning psycho killer roosters and also because every word Jinx said drove home the fact that she wouldn't be saying them to him for much longer.

He probably wouldn't ever see her again. She'd go home and probably go to college and get a normal job and he'd, what? What would he do? If Bentley and Murray moved on, what would Sly do?

If it got to the point where he could only remember as much about Bentley and Murray and Kaia as he did about his dad, if it got to the point where he couldn't just talk to them whenever he wanted, how would that be better?

He wanted the Fiendish Five to pay. He wanted his family's book back.

But he kind of also wanted things to stay exactly the way they were.

"_And why do you have a time limit? How badly does this ghost need the gumbo? Is he having a party for all his other ghost friends? How do ghosts eat anyw-?_"

"Can you just let me concentrate for a second?" Sly snapped hooking his cane around chicken number thirty-seven.

There was a second, just a split second where he had enough time to realize he'd been harsh and regret it, then Jinx's voice came back over the binocucom.

"_Sorry_," she said quietly.

Then she clicked off and Sly hated himself a little.

* * *

"You alright, Kaia?"

I blinked, snapped out of my blank staring contest with a discolored patch of van carpet, and looked up at Bentley. After taking a moment to kick my brain into gear, I nodded and tried for a smile. "Yeah, fine. Why?"

He didn't look convinced and didn't answer my question, but he did turn back to his work station. All the treasure keys had been stolen and he was trying to make sure he had as much information as possible.

Murray was outside, prepping for our getaway. No matter what condition he kept the van in, he still checked it repeatedly when he really needed to rely on it.

And I was just sitting there. Nothing to do, no way to contribute. And I was really starting to question when I'd felt the need to contribute to a gang of thieves.

All in all, not the best frame of mind to be in.

Tapping a pen against the map in front of him, Bentley frowned. "Mz. Ruby is holed up in that skull temple. If something goes wrong, we're not going to have any time to get up there.

"Can she actually take on Sly in a fight?" I asked, mildly curious. I didn't know a lot about Sly, but I knew he could fight.

"She has powers that go against nature itself, I think it's safe to say that attempting to predict the outcome of that fight based on physical skill is a waste of time."

I paused and really thought about that. "He is literally launching himself into a fight where his opponent has mystical powers that he probably can't counter, isn't he?"

Bentley considered that and winced. "Yes, yes he is."

"I'm understanding your concern a little better now."

Something on his monitor caught his eye and he grimaced, "Yup, there he goes. He just used steam pressure to rocket into the lair of a voodoo priestess. That is a thing that he did."

"Do bad guys feel the urge to be as high up as possible for any particular reason or are they just going for melodrama points?"

"Your guess is as good as mine, at this point."

* * *

Sly'd had to turn off his earpiece while he was fighting Mz. Ruby.

There was only so much shouting about recklessness and suicidal tendencies he could take before he started getting distracted. And Voodoo Simon Says was not a good game to be playing while distracted.

But he'd done it. The third member of the Fiendish Five, the third person responsible for him being orphaned, had been taken down.

It didn't help as much as he'd thought it would. None of the victories had so far. They did help some, but he knew that he wasn't _done_. He was over halfway there now, but he wasn't done.

He was closer now. Just like Raleigh and Muggshot before her, Mz. Ruby had dropped a name. A name- and a location.

The Panda King. China.

Sly repeated those words over and over to himself. One more step, one more clue. It felt like he'd never be done, but it also felt like the end of everything was just around the corner.

He couldn't tell which alternative he preferred.

Inspector Fox was, of course, behind him by the average wingspan of a baby gnat. Still, he was good at pressing every advantage he got beyond the point of no return, so he was out of the skull temple with a fraction of a second to spare, leaving Mz. Ruby to face down a furious battalion of Interpol officers.

Turning on his earpiece again, he listened for Bentley's instructions on where to meet up, moving mechanically through the swamp, to where the van was parked. Most of the ghosts and golems were gone, dissipating without Mz. Ruby's energy around to give them life.

The Thievius Raccoonus pages were too light in his hands, too fragile. He'd have put them in his backpack, but he didn't want them any more crumpled than they already were. The humidity of the swamp had warped them out of flatness already, they didn't need any more problems.

Maybe there was a way to restore the pages? No, he couldn't turn back the hands of time. And even if he could, he certainly wouldn't waste the opportunity on _paper_.

The van was already running when he reached it. It usually was, Murray was nothing if not willing to drive.

His legs hurt and all of his skin felt damp and overheated, like he was running a fever.

The back doors of the van flew open as he approached and Jinx reached out to give him a hand in, a weird expression on her face, somewhere between worried and annoyed. She opened her mouth to say something when he gripped her hand, but he cut her off.

"We're going to find the Panda King. In China."

She stared at him, just for a second. Sound went out of the world in that second, except for the very familiar _smack_ of Bentley dropping his head into his hands.

Then Kaia let go of his hand.

Midway into entering the van, Sly went reeling backwards, landing on the soft, swampy ground.

He barely had time to feel disoriented before Kaia let out a sound of pure, undiluted _frustration_ and launched herself at him.

* * *

... Hey, don't look at me, their dynamic is way different when they're younger.

Hope you enjoyed! Feel free to check out the blog and I'll see you in a couple of weeks!


	7. The One With The Peace Offering

Hey everyone! I can't believe we're going through this story as quickly as we are. I really need to get cracking on the sequel to Nightingale Syndrome. I've written about twenty pages, but I haven't quite hit my stride yet. I'll work on that!

In the meantime, please enjoy this!

* * *

The ride to the nice hotel Bentley had booked in anticipation of a celebratory arrival was a quiet one.

Violence probably hadn't been the intention at work when Kaia lost it, but she and Sly had still tussled on the ground for about a minute anyway before Bentley and Murray had managed to break it up. Though, admittedly, it had been less a fight and more Kaia grabbing the front of Sly's shirt, shaking him, and screaming 'what the hell is wrong with you' and various permutations thereof directly into his face while Sly had strongly objected to having a loud hybrid sitting on his chest and yelling at him.

For all they hadn't been trying to hurt each other, Kaia's upper lip had been cut open, probably by one of her own teeth, Sly was favoring his left leg a bit, and they were both rumpled-looking and sporting patches of mud in their fur and on their clothes.

Tensions were high, even though there was utter silence. Murray drove, Kaia in the shotgun seat, curled in on herself and pressed against the door, arm crossed and knees tucked against her chest, radiating anger. Sly sat as far away from her as possible, at the back left of the van, leaning against the back doors and rubbing his fingers carefully over the new Thievius Raccoonus pages, trying to smooth them out without compromising the old paper or the faded ink. The marks looked like hieroglyphics, but there were translations in several languages underneath.

Murray had been upset by the fighting, so he was focusing _very_ hard on the road as he drove and not moving his hands from the correct positions on the wheel by so much as a centimeter.

Bentley, though, he was thinking. Something was clearly going on with Sly. Something had been going on with Sly for a very long time. And he knew part of it, the whole thing with the Fiendish Five and Sly's dad and the Thievius Raccoonus, that was all a huge part of it.

But he was starting to think that that wasn't _all_ of it. That there might be something else bothering Sly.

He didn't think it was exclusive to Kaia. Maybe her presence served as a catalyst for it, but it was a problem that was already there.

If he could just figure out what it was, maybe they could fix this. Because, right then, Kaia was furious and Sly was quiet, but he looked vaguely hurt and also kind of confused and those were emotions that he didn't think he'd ever associate with either of them.

It was time to stop ignoring the situation. That clearly hadn't worked. He had to do something, before Sly pissed off someone that could actually hurt him or took another risk that could kill him.

Bentley hadn't planned on Kaia when he'd booked the rooms, but managed to wheedle his way into getting two rooms that were next to each other. Kaia immediately took one key, bit off a brusque 'I'm rooming with Murray' and stormed into the nearest room, Murray following after her, clutching an armload of coloring books and crayons, like he hoped to apply those to the problem.

Sly didn't react at all, just mechanically opened up the door to their room and shuffled inside, his backpack hanging from the strap held loosely in his fingers. He looked tired.

Bentley closed the door behind them. He was between Sly and the exit. It was now or never.

"We need to talk."

Sly immediately bristled, shoulders coming up, head going down, fist clenching around the strap of his backpack and his cane. Then he let out a breath, not quite enthusiastic enough for a sigh, but still somehow dejected, and all the bluster ran out of him.

"What?"

His voice was flat, free of inflection, like he wasn't even asking a question. Like he already knew what was about to be said, even though Bentley himself was still figuring it out.

Bentley was a turtle of subtlety, quiet manipulation. Of code, not people. People were difficult, people were incomprehensible.

People needed to _use their words_.

"What is going _on_ with you?" he asked after a few seconds of tense silence. "You've been scaring me for a while, Sly, but this is different. I don't know what's going on with you, so I don't have any idea how to help."

"I don't _need_ your help," Sly flung his backpack onto the bed nearest the door, frustration in every muscle twitch. "If I needed help, I'd help myself. That's just how it's going to have to be, I get that."

What did that-?

Oh.

_Oh_.

Sly thought they were going to leave him. After this one mission, he thought they were going to leave.

Guilt and confusion and frustration and indignation warred under Bentley's skin. Why would Sly think that? Had he done anything that would give that impression? No, he was sure he hadn't. Did Sly not trust him and Murray? Did he just not believe in their years of brotherhood?

It was exasperating and infuriating and upsetting and Bentley... really didn't know what to do.

Getting angry at Sly wouldn't help. He'd be expecting that, would see it as a prelude to the inevitable severance of the ties between the gang. So no matter what choice words were building up inside Bentley's mind, about the sacrifices they'd all made just to get to this point and how he didn't understand why Sly couldn't believe in them, he couldn't say them.

But what _would_ help? If the years between them and the last few months of teamwork hadn't convinced Sly, what would? How deeply entrenched was the idea of his inevitable abandonment?

It was... scary. To think that Sly might stay like this. Running headlong into danger without a second thought, just because he believed he'd be alone soon anyway, so what did it matter?

Sly had to believe in them. He _needed_ to believe in them. He needed to see a future beyond gathering the lost pages of the Thievius Raccoonus.

But how? This was probably the most important conversation they would ever have and Bentley didn't have any words.

He didn't have time to think about it. The longer the silence stretched, the longer Sly would take it as an affirmation, the more he would shut down.

So Bentley just started talking.

"I know where my parents are." Well, that wasn't what he meant to say, but there was no hope that Sly hadn't heard it- the raccoon's head had snapped up so quickly it was amazing he hadn't injured himself and he was looking at Bentley with straight shock on his face. "I found out, after I left the orphanage."

"That's where you wer-" Sly paused, shook his head. "I thought you were left at the orphanage before you even hatched?"

"Me too," Bentley shrugged. "Apparently, that's not the way it happened. I had a family. I had siblings. Someone found me wandering around the swamp and assumed I'd wandered away from home and got lost, you know how bad my eyesight is. The orphanage was supposed to be temporary, until the police could find my family. But when no missing children reports for a young turtle came through..."

Sly straightened, his expression fluctuating between outrage and sadness, "They never came looking for you?"

"No. I was young enough that I forgot almost all of that and, when I first started asking questions, I was told that I was left behind as an egg. I guess they thought the idea that a scared mother couldn't raise me was kinder than the thought that I had a whole family that just didn't care enough to come looking. I found out the truth when I gathered all the records on myself that I could, once I left the orphanage. I was planning to purge myself from the system, in preparation for when you, me, and Murray started working together.

"So yes, that's where I was. I should have told you guys before I left, but Murray was doing so well in his delivery service and you'd just joined the basketball team, so I thought you two would be okay without me for a couple of weeks. I didn't realize I'd come back and find Murray fired and you on the verge of expulsion."

Sly grimaced, "But... you found them?"

"Yes. I found them." It had been a surprised that it was so easy to find them, but he had. "They lived less than fifty miles from the orphanage. I have two sisters and one brother, all older than me, and my parents are still married."

Shuffling in place, Sly looked like he was more than a little uncomfortable. "Did you talk to them?"

"No."

"Why not?"

That was an excellent question. It wasn't like Bentley hadn't spent and awful long time looking at the house, walking up, letting his finger hover over the doorbell, and then running away so he could have an asthma attack in peace. He was curious about these people. He wanted to know so much.

But, ultimately, "Because they didn't look for me. Maybe there's a good reason, maybe they regret it, but they didn't come looking." He sighed, looking up at Sly. "Because they abandoned me. And even if they welcomed me with open arms, even if they were sorry, there's no way I could really trust them, not like I trust you and Murray. You guys are my family. You will always be my family. And even if I get the courage someday to go talk to them, that isn't going to change.

"I don't know what's going to happen in the long run. Maybe we'll decide we want to do separate things eventually. I can't see that right now, but it could happen. There is something I want you to know, though." Swallowing, he made sure he had eye contact before he continued, "Even if you're running around the world with an entirely different gang in a decade, I'm still going to be going through your plans before you use them and watching out for you and calling you up to yell at you for _shooting yourself out of canons, _you _reckless idiot_."

Sly's snort of laughter seemed to catch in his throat, choking him as he slowly sank to the hotel carpet, like whatever had been holding him up had vanished and he just didn't have the strength to be upright anymore. Ducking his head, he pressed a shaking hand over his eyes.

Walking over to sit next to his friend, Bentley remained silent. He'd said his piece, now he just had to wait for Sly to process it and, hopefully, he'd come up with the right conclusion.

He resisted the urge to fidget as they sat in the quiet, the only real sound being Sly's labored breathing as he fought to bring himself under control.

Finally, the raccoon let out a long, loaded breath and said, "I'm sorry."

Bentley's sigh of relief felt like it cleared out all the air in his body. He relaxed against the bed at his back, "It's okay. Well, I forgive you, but you're going to need to talk to Kaia for her to say it's really okay. And you're going to need to stop with the reckless behavior before I stop with the worry."

Nodding, Sly let his hand slide down his face. His eyes were slightly red, "I don't know why I did that."

"Yes you do. You like having friends and you like those friends to be with you. And I don't think any of us consider her less than a friend at this point."

"Maybe," Sly rubbed his fingers along the length of his cane, reassuring himself that it was there. "She's really angry, though."

"I think she's more angry that you took the decision away from her than that you tried to make her stay in the first place."

"Do you think she would've stayed if I'd asked?"

"I don't know. You'll have to ask her."

* * *

I had never been angrier in my entire life.

Well, okay, anger wasn't really the primary emotion, but it was directly caused by the primary emotion, so there was a lot of it.

I didn't usually hold onto anger for very long, I tended to progress to sadness or confusion after the initial offense, something my friend, Millie, informed me was a character flaw. This time, however, this time I was _seething_.

After dumping my stuff on the bed farthest from the door, I immediately commandeered the bathroom for a very hot, angry shower. It's kind of hard to stay mad during a shower, though, especially when you can just _feel_ the days of swamp gunk being washed out of your fur and the shampoo and soap provided by the hotel smells like oranges.

I was still kind of annoyed when I got out of the shower, wrapping up in a fluffy robe the hotel had provided and systematically toweling my hair dry, but mostly I was just _tired_. Having emotions was exhausting, especially when those emotions were anger and hurt. I'd hung onto them longer than usual, sure, but I seriously didn't have it in me to hold onto them for very long.

That didn't mean I forgave Sly. It just meant I wouldn't attack him on sight. Probably.

Murray looked up when I shuffled back into the room, wrapped my hair up in the towel and settling it on top of my head. He was laying on his front on the floor, a coloring book in front of him and a giant box of crayons standing open. He picked up the stack of coloring books at his elbow and offered them to me, "Do you want to color?"

I considered just going to bed for a moment, but I had to admit that spending a little time coloring sounded way more relaxing.

While I didn't answer aloud, I settled on the floor next to him, taking the pile of coloring books and shuffling through them until I found one for what looked like a cartoon about ninjas.

We colored in silence for a few minutes before Murray finally asked, "Kaia, do you... hate Sly?"

That caught me a little bit by surprise, but, when I looked up and saw the worry in Murray's eyes, I realized the question probably wasn't that odd for him. "No." I went back to my coloring book. "I'm mad at him, but I don't hate him."

"Good," Murray went back to his coloring book too.

"Why do you ask?"

"My mom told me," he said quietly, "that hating someone means that you won't ever forgive them, even if they say they're sorry. And that's why you shouldn't say you hate people."

I hummed, my lips twitching, "Your mom sounds like a smart lady."

"She _totally_ was!"

* * *

There were a _lot_ of flowers.

That was probably a side effect of, y'know, being in the _tropics_, but Sly kind of hated all the choices. How was he supposed to know which one was _best_ when there were so _many_?

"How mad?"

Sly looked up in surprise at the sound of someone addressing him in English. The bright sunlight stabbed at his eyes, even through his sunglasses, but the tall fox standing next to him was hard to miss.

The fox wasn't dressed for a tropical vacation. He was wearing a button-down shirt and slacks, like he'd just come from a business meeting, which was more than a little weird considering the flower stand was in the resort area on the beach and the only other people around were either on vacation or employees of the hotels and resorts.

He was wearing a smug, amused smile and Sly took a moment to play back what he'd asked, then frowned when it still didn't make sense. "What?"

"You look mad at the flowers," the fox inclined his head toward the stand. "You're trying to apologize to someone aren't you? Hard to pick the right ones, isn't it?"

"How-?" Sly started to ask, then just sighed, because starting something over _flowers_ really wasn't worth it. "Any suggestions?"

"It depends on who you're buying them for." The fox shrugged. "My fiancé likes violets. He'll usually forgive me if violets and food are involved. Also, I'm really good at looking miserable. That helps."

"I don't know what she likes," Sly admitted, looking back at the flowers and frowning. "I don't know a lot about her really."

"You were just hoping flowers would do the trick?"

"Most people like flowers."

"True," the fox canted his head forward and peered over the flowers on offer. "Huh, no gardenias. I was going to suggest that."

Sly frowned harder, "Why gardenias?"

"No reason." The fox considered a bouquet of violets, then took a step back from the stand. "Maybe you can think on what you _do_ know about her and go from there. Flowers aren't a requirement."

When the fox turned to go, Sly was surprised. "Aren't you going to get flowers for your fiancé?"

"Nah. I mean, I'll need to get some when I get back, accidental emergency business trips have a tendency to piss off the love of my life. I'm a long way from home, though. If I got flowers now, they'd die before I got home to him. Besides, the flower stand near where we live takes pity on me. It's the miserable face." The fox waved over his shoulder, "Good luck!"

That was weird.

Returning his gaze to the explosion of colors and scents, Sly let out a sigh. Maybe flowers weren't the right route after all. But what else would Jinx want as a peace offering, besides maybe his head on a platter?

A car drove by, windows down, blaring music and he flinched at the racket.

The he paused, thought about it, and grinned.

That could work.

* * *

I was becoming a connoisseur of hotel rooms, by this point in my summer. This one was pretty nice. Comfy beds, room service (I was driving up that tab like nobody's business, yes I was), a view of the beach, and five hundred channels.

And I was so incredibly _bored_.

None of the stuff in my grab bag of assorted items could hold my attention for longer than a few minutes and I was seriously just about to start pacing to get rid of some of the pent-up energy.

Then there was a knock at the door.

I paused in my attempt at folding some of the hotel stationery into paper cranes and looked up. I hadn't ordered any food since lunch, so it wasn't room service. Murray was out with Bentley, enjoying the sun. They weren't going to go, but I'd practically kicked them out when I'd seen the collection of sand-castle gear Murray had brought along.

I didn't know where Sly had gotten to, but, when the knock came at the door a second time, I had a pretty good guess.

Sighing, I got to my feet and walked over to the door. A glance through the peephole revealed, as I'd suspected, Sly Cooper. A very... nervous looking Sly Cooper. Great. This conversation was going to be fun.

Letting out a breath, I unlocked and opened the door. I'd barely opened my mouth to ask what Sly wanted before he was pushing a box and a handful of cards into my hands.

Fumbling them, I looked down and saw the box for an iPod nano and five or six twenty-dollar iTunes gift cards.

"Sorry," Sly blurted out, looking like he was about to bolt.

Staring down at the items in my hands, I took a deep breath, keeping the smile off my face through sheer force of will, because this was important. "You know why I'm mad, though, right?"

"Yeah," Sly shifted his weight, his eyes darting back and forth like he wasn't sure where to look. "I should've asked and not just... yeah."

"Right." I waited a few more seconds, just to get some petty revenge, then pulled the door open a little wider with one foot. "Come on, we're going to argue about music now."

There was a moment where Sly hesitated, like he wasn't quite ready to believe the sudden reversal of my attitude towards him. That didn't last, though. After a few seconds, the nervous energy bled out of his shoulders and he offered a hesitant smiled.

Then he stepped inside.

* * *

"This is the most pathetic excuse for a summer vacation ever," I said aloud, a week later, while rubbing at my eyes, which did absolutely nothing to banish the lingering effects of the sedative from my system. Couldn't blame a gal for trying, though.

"What makes you think that?" Bentley asked from his desk, where he was typing away mysteries into his computer. Probably the secrets of life, or something. Sly and Murray were nowhere to be seen, so they were probably off doing _something_ illegal.

I stretched my legs and arms out, trying to get some blood flowing. "I've done nothing but sit in various rooms for the last few weeks, staring at the walls and feeling the madness set in. If one of my teachers gets the bright idea to have us write papers over our summer vacations, I'm just going to have to compare and contrast hotel rooms and ways of getting around airport security."

"Alternatively," Bentley suggested, not even looking up from his computer, "you could describe how you travelled to many different countries while in the company of a gang of internationally wanted master thieves and witnessed the takedowns of, so far, three master criminals."

"I was really only there for Muggshot," I pointed out. "And even that took place about fifty feet over my head."

"Only you could make taking down master criminals seem like nothing to write home about."

As a fairly proud person, it's difficult to admit, but absolutely true that I screeched like a brake failure when Sly's voice came from _right next to me_.

This, of course, sent him into peals of laughter, especially when I gave Bentley a look of complete betrayal.

Bentley shrugged helplessly. "He wanted to try out his new technique."

"Is that new technique _teleportation_?" I asked, one hand clutching the front of my shirt and feeling my heart go crazy inside my chest.

The pages were in Sly's hand, but I couldn't make out what was written on them. The raccoon himself was just grinning, still pleased with his success in scaring a decade off my life. "It's invisibility."

I narrowed my eyes at him. "Bentley? Can you invent a time machine, so I can go to the past and explain to Sly's ancestors how the laws of physics work?"

"While that is a noble use for a time machine, I'm afraid I simply don't have the time just now."

"Besides, I don't think physics have that much to do with it," Sly said, rubbing the corner of one of the pages between his fingers. "I think that's why Mz. Ruby had the pages, I think there's something paranormal involved."

"And you were able to do it even though you don't know for sure?"

"Yeah. I think it's because I'm holding the pages." Sly seemed to notice that he'd been fidgeting with the paper and smoothed out the corner carefully. "I don't want to have them with me all the time, in case they get damaged. Still, I think it'll be okay while I'm looking for the rest of the pages."

"Hopefully it'll keep you out of trouble," Bentley said ruefully, his typing coming to a halt. "And I just found the Interpol file on the Panda King."

"Good reading?" Sly's tone was light, but his expression had slammed shut.

"So far," Bentley said absently, scrolling down, eyes flicking back and forth at a reading speed that simply couldn't be possible. "Looks like he tried for an honest life's work and turned to crime when he was rejected because of his social status."

"We could avoid a lot of world problems if rich people would stop being jerks," I grumbled, leaning my head against the back of the couch and rubbing at my forehead with my fingertips.

"That is a drastic oversimplification, but, more or less, accurate."

"Do we have a better idea for his location that just 'China'?" I heard ask as he shifted on the seat.

"Indeed. Give me a few days to get travel plans ironed out and we'll be on our way."

* * *

Hope you guys enjoyed the chapter! As always, feel free to drop by the blog and I'd love a review if you have the time. See you in a couple of weeks!


	8. The One With The Fireworks

Hello, friends! I recently got diagnosed with tendinitis in my foot, which means I haven't been allowed to walk much while I'm recovering, which means I've been practically chained to my desk, which means progress on the sequel has actually happened! I'm three chapters in now, but that's not much for what I'm expecting will be at least a twenty-five chapters story. Still, it's progress!

Enjoy the chapter!

* * *

"I cannot deal with this in July," I said darkly, shivering into my tightly folded arms. "Mountains! I don't get it, how can we drop forty degrees in the span of time takes to drive up a mountain?"

"I suspect that you're complaining more than actually asking me about elevation and the effects it has on meteorology," Bentley said absentmindedly, setting up the binocucom station.

Sly leaned halfway over the back of the front seat, grinning as his tail swayed to maintain his balance. "Aw, are you cold Jinx?"

"I'm going to throw you into a snowdrift here in a minute."

Murray leaned over to fiddle with some of the knobs on the dash. "I'll turn up the heat!"

"You are the best of all of us."

Momentarily abandoning the knobs to carefully stop the van, wary of possible ice on the thin mountain path, Murray said, "Okay, this is as high as we can go in the van."

"Got it, pal." Sly sat back, threw open the door, and slipped out.

"Did he just go out in this without a coat?" I hissed, flinching away from the cold gust of air that had swept in from the door.

Bentley sighed, even as his fingers flew across the keys of his keyboard. "Yes, yes he did. He does that. He claims running around keeps him warm enough, but I'm pretty sure he just doesn't want to risk the noise a coat might make."

"Has he ever gotten frostbite?"

"Not that he's admitted to."

"Awesome."

Humming an affirmative, Bentley perked up when he finally got the video feed in the binocucom program up and running. "Would you look at that?" he asked, looking at the sparks streaking across the night sky through Sly's binocucom. "A fireworks show!"

I leaned over his shoulder. "Isn't that kind of low for a firewo-"

And that was when the rocket crashed into the side of a snow capped mountain, dumping literal tons of snow on a tiny village so accurately that it had to have been calculated.

A shiver ran through my body that had nothing to do with the cold as Bentley gaped.

"Oh my gosh, that's awful! That poor village just got buried in freezing snow!"

"_The rocket came from that giant statue,_" Sly mused darkly panning to a large statue of a panda, higher up the mountain, "_and you can bet the Panda King lit the fuse. I've gotta find my way up there and fast- before that lunatic squashes another town!_"

Sitting back on my heels, I stared blankly at Bentley's screen.

That was... everything up until that avalanche was kind of comical. Raleigh had a weather machine, Muggshot was living in his very own mob movie, and Mz. Ruby had freaking _zombies_, but the Panda King had just brought down a mountain on people right in front of us. It made everything unsettlingly real.

The Cooper gang went up against criminals in a way that exposed their crimes to Interpol. They literally had an Interpol agent following them everywhere. Even if the local authorities were corrupt or couldn't do anything, there was hope if enough people found out. And high-profile master thieves brought a lot of publicity.

I'd always wondered at the ethics of stealing from thieves, if it was justifiable, but I decided right then and there that I didn't care. Exposing these people was right. Getting rich off it was a bonus.

Inhaling deeply, I started pulling on my shoes. "Murray, do you have a shovel or something?"

"Uh, why?"

Bentley turned and looked at me with mild disapproval. "You can't go down to the village and try to dig it up all by yourself. You'll freeze."

I shrugged. "It's better than doing nothing. It's not like I can help you guys out on the thievery side of things, so this is really my only option."

He gave me a long, long look. Then he tilted his head to one side and... smiled? "Murray, can Kaia borrow your coat?"

"Sure thing!"

"Um." I caught the coat Murray threw over the back of the seat. Though, it might have been more accurate to say I was _buried_ by the coat Murray threw over the back of the seat. Fighting my way free of the pink fabric, I looked over at Bentley. "Call me crazy, but I don't think it's going to fit."

"It'll at least keep you warm," he said, rummaging under the floor panels for something and emerging with what looked like a jack glued to the back of the head of a snow shovel. He pointed to a button. "Press that when you're outside and the handle will extend. Take this too." He dug around in a container next to his workstation and produced a binocucom in a plain white case. "In case you need help."

Shrugging, I took it, tucking it into one massive pocket and ignoring the crinkle of snack wrappers. "Okay, but you guys should just focus on taking down the Panda King before this can happen again."

"Duly noted. Let us know if you need a pickup."

"Yeah, yeah." I flapped my arms through the sleeves a few times until the excess fabric was bundled around my wrists, then fastened the coat, tightened the laces on my shoes, grabbed the shovel, and bounded out the back doors of the van.

Then I immediately regretted the decision to do so.

As cold as it had been in the van, it was _far_ colder outside. The mountain air was thin, the wind was strong, and the snow came up to my ankles. It was only pride and stubbornness that kept me from diving right back into the van.

Instead, I let the sleeves fall back over my hands and flipped the hood up over my head. I probably looked comical in Murray's giant pink coat. It came down to my knees and the hood practically ate my head, but Bentley was right, it was pretty warm.

The trek down to the village took about an hour. The scenery wouldn't have been beautiful if it weren't for, you know, the cold and the mass murder. The mountain peaks stretched toward the sky all around me and the snowflakes falling from the clouds lit up in the light from the torches and looked like floating stars as they descended.

I kept trying to look around, even though the wind made my eyes sting and water, both to make sure I was in the right place and because, well, it _was_ kind of pretty.

A couple of times, I lost my footing on some hidden patches of evil, evil ice, but I managed to avoid rolling down the mountain in a steadily-growing snowball, for the most part. Still, I couldn't quite feel my feet by the time I reached valley the village was in.

When I rounded the bend to see the remains of the village I had to stop and stare.

There were splintered beams poking out of the snow, brightly colored roof tiles visible only as bumps under the pile of frozen flakes. But there were also villagers, holding torches and milling around. There were close to forty of them and they didn't look frantic, like they were looking for buried people, they were organized, gathered around a building that was only partially buried and trying to clear snow away from the entrance. Most of them had some small spades, but some were using their hands, so I hurried over, clutching Bentley's Franken-shovel tightly.

When they looked up at my approach, I abruptly realized that I didn't speak Chinese at all, so this was probably going to devolve to charades or something. I pressed the button on the shovel and nearly dropped it when the handle started flipping out, stopping when it reached five feet in length.

"Ah, another helping hand."

One of the people with spades stood up, a long, bushy red tail swinging behind him that seemed out of place in the crowd of monkeys and herons. He pushed his hood back, revealing bright green eyes and that particularly worrying grin foxes always seemed to have. Turning to the other workers, he rattled off a few words in Chinese and their confused looks quickly became welcoming as they waved me over.

"How did you do that?" I asked the fox, as I fell in next to him.

"I made words with my mouth. May I?" he held a hand out for the big shovel, which I handed over. He looked way stronger than me and he was well over six feet, he'd probably be able to use the shovel faster and better than I would.

Tucking my hands into the sleeves again and folding my arms, I gave him a long look. His clothes didn't look Chinese and he didn't have an accent. "Who are you?"

"Just a translator."

"What are you doing here?"

"I got lost on my way home."

I narrowed my eyes at him, partially because of his answers and partially because he didn't look annoyed at the repeated questions. If anything, he looked _entertained_. "We're in the middle of the mountains."

"I got lost a _lot_." He cut a look my way. "And what are you doing here? Your accent's American. You're a long way from home."

I pointed at the village. "I wanted to help out, but some smart aleck took my shovel."

Dipping his head, he let out a low, rolling chuckle and handed me his discarded spade. "Help us clear the door."

Folding the sleeves around my hands so my fingers would freeze, I grabbed the spade. "Why are we clearing this building in particular?"

"This is where all their valuables are." The fox wasn't even winded as he hefted shovelful after shovelful of snow from the door. "They had some warning, were able to evacuate and get the things they really needed to this storehouse. It's on the edge of the village, they weren't expecting the avalanche to reach it. It's still standing, though."

I paused, stabbing the spade into a chunk of snow. "How'd they have warning? Did one of the Panda King's guards let them know?"

"They knew it was coming because they couldn't pay the 'protection fee'," the foxes face darkened just a bit at the words, "but I'm not sure how they found out exactly _when_ it was coming."

A commotion from the other end of the village caught my attention. Some of the villagers were huddled around a small figure that looked like they'd just come down another path from the mountain. I was trying to decide if I wanted to go see what it was about when metal scraped against wood, making my fur stand on end.

The fox stood, knocking the last bit of snow off the Franken-shovel and leading me out of the way so the other villagers could finally pull the doors open and inspect their remaining belongings. He tilted his head toward the commotion on the other side of the village. "Want to go see what's going on?"

"Sure." I took the shovel back, turning it over in my hands as we walked until I found a button on the other side that retracted the handle again.

It turned out the newcomer was a small panda girl. She was talking frantically with an elderly heron woman, who seemed to be trying to calm her down. The girl was dressed much more nicely than the villagers, with a long, silvery-blue coat and sturdy-looking boots and gloves.

When we approached, the girl gave us a small bow and spoke in careful English. "They say you came to help them with the snow. Thank you."

The fox bowed back and I said, "It's nothing."

She looked up at us, swallowing hard. Her eyes were bright, but she politely held out a hand. "I am Jing King."

"I'm Kaia," I replied, shaking her hand. "Are you the Panda King's daughter?"

"Yes." She swallowed again. "I tried to stop him, but I couldn't, so I warned the villagers instead."

"That was very good of you," the fox said, his voice soothing.

Jing shook her head. "I should have done more. These people do not have homes anymore."

"You did a lot," the fox insisted. "You gave them their lives."

Sniffing slightly, Jing King raised her head. "Thank you. I must return home, before my father notices that I am gone."

"Is it safe for you to go all that way by yourself?" I asked, thinking of not only the harsh weather, but also that some villagers might not be as appreciative as the others and might try to take their anger out on Jing.

The fox slipped into Chinese so easily I was left blinking at him in surprise. He and Jing exchanged a few words, then she nodded and he turned to me. "I'll walk her until she gets to the grounds. The guards there are more than aware of how important her safety is."

I'd have been a little wary of the fox, but he genuinely seemed like a decent person. Besides, with Bentley having eyes and ears everywhere, we'd know if something happened to Jing, and the fox's fingerprints were on the shovel anyway. "Okay." I turned to Jing. "Be careful."

"Yes." She bowed again. "You have our thanks."

And then they were off. With no way to communicate with the other villagers and no knowledge of where else to help, I headed back up the mountain towards the van.

Going up was much worse than going down, both for the obvious reason of gravity and because my feet had reached the point where they were so cold that my _bones_ ached and the thinness of the air made it hard to catch my breath.

"Hey, Jinx!"

I looked up when I'd nearly reached the van to see Sly coming my way, a hand up in greeting. I blinked sluggishly at him. "Back already?"

He held up a ring, on which four keys clinked happily. "I've had a busy couple of hours. Bentley wanted me to come back to the van and warm up, but he said you went to go help the village?"

Nodding, I fell into step with him. "Yeah. They were mostly okay, though. I mean, their houses are destroyed, by no one was caught in the avalanche. The Panda King's daughter warned them."

Sly stopped short, shooting me a look. "The Panda King has a daughter? How old is she?"

"Um," I rolled my head, trying to ease an itch at the back of my neck without pulling my hands free of their warm cocoons. "My age? Maybe a little older? She was _tiny_ and I'm bad at guessing ages, but I think that's right."

"Huh." How Sly wasn't freezing to death was beyond me. He dragged his feet a little as we walked until I finished my internal debate on whether to ask or leave it alone.

"What's on your mind?"

Sighing, he spun the keyring around his finger. "I'm just trying to figure out what the Panda King thought he was doing joining up with the Fiendish Five when he had a _six-year-old_ at home. It's not like he'd be Dad of the Year or anything, but that's still a little weird. When you have a kid, they're your number one priority, not getting back at snide nobles."

I smiled to myself. He had that particular tone of voice he always got when he talked about his dad. "Did your dad tell you that?"

"He didn't have to. He showed me, every day." Catching the keys in his fist, he exhaled, then started flipping the ring around. "Did she seem scared of him or anything?"

"No, just frustrated and sad. And she didn't seem to mind going home."

"I'll keep an eye out anyway." We both stopped when we came to the spot where the van... _should_ have been. "That can't be good."

Shifting my weight rapidly in an attempt to get warm, I watched while Sly pulled out his binocucom to contact Murray. "They need to get back before my feet fall off."

"Murray's racing for a treasure key, it'll probably be a little while." Sly hesitated, then glanced farther up the mountain. After a moment of deep though, he gave a wicked grin. "Want to go get a treasure key?"

I stared blankly at him for a moment. "You mean... go on a job? ... with you?"

"Yup."

"An actual job?"

"You were the one complaining about being cold. This'll get the blood flowing."

It was probably going to be dangerous. It was almost definitely going to be terrifying. But it also sounded really, _really_ interesting. "Sure, why not?"

* * *

"Is it just me, or is that dragon statue a little gratuitous?" I asked, pushing the bangs out of my face.

"It's not just you." Sly waved me closer so we could ride a _firework powered spinning platform_ like an escalator up to the roof of one of the buildings jutting out the side of the mountain. Apparently, the treasure key was all the way at the top.

I maybe held a _little_ too tightly to him as we stepped onto the next roof. "Next time, invite me on a job that takes place completely on the ground."

"Yes, Your Majesty."

I opened my mouth to retort, but the words died in my throat when I caught sight of the dragon statue, key held in its mouth- and the woman on top of it.

"Freeze, raccoon!"

Sly had his cane around my neck and an arm around my shoulders before I could even process Carmelita's _presence_. "How can I freeze when my heart warms at the very sight of you?" the words rolled off his tongue easily, but I could feel the line of tension running through his body.

"Shut up, ringtail! Are you okay, Kaia?"

The vixen's voice was so furious and demanding that I hardly processed that she was asking after my well-being. "Fine," I answered, a little breathlessly. The metal of the cane was cold against my neck, but I wasn't scared of anything except losing my footing.

Carmelita gritted her teeth, her eyes locked over my shoulder, on Sly. "I don't know what you're doing in China, but I'm sure it can't be good for whoever owns this place. Let go of the girl and back away."

If anything, Sly's grip tightened. "You must only have eyes for me if you're too blind to see what's really going on here."

The insult didn't go unnoticed. "All I see it's a pathetic thief and kidnapper who's escaped justice for far too long."

"I'm proud to be a thief." Sly shot back, shifting his weight. I braced myself, preparing to run. "Especially when I'm stealing from a vicious extortionist like the Panda King. Open your eyes, 'Detective'. These quaint temples are a front for an illegal explosives factory."

"He's right," I said, because I had to say _something_. "The Panda King just caused an avalanche that buried an entire village a few hours ago, I saw it."

But Carmelita wasn't listening. "Don't try to confuse the issue. You criminals are all the same, and none of you can escape justice."

"Hang on."

That was all the warning I got before Sly was running, dragging me along with him. He tightened his grip on me before jumping and catching a line overhead with his cane.

And then we were falling at a rather spectacular rate.

I might have screamed, it's was hard to hear over the sound of my life flashing before my eyes.

The landing was rough, but I was talking even as I lurched to my feet.

"Never do that again. And don't invite me on jobs where Interpol officers are going to be present."

"We didn't exactly have time to compare schedules," Sly hissed, seizing my hand as Carmelita came after us. "Run!"

It was a time to be grateful that Carmelita was a bad shot because she was firing kind of indiscriminately as Sly and I booked it across the frozen stone paths of the temple.

The temple was convoluted and nonsensical. Fortunately, there were plenty of rockets lying around for blowing holes through walls.

"Oh God no." I tried to stop short as the path Sly wanted to take led across the tops of several giant lamps, but Sly had a good grip and a lot of momentum, so we went tumbling forward, out of Carmelita's sight.

"We have to keep moving," Sly said, dragging me along through ruined hallways as they twisted around the dragon statue.

Some of the halls had giant gaps where the floor used to be, forcing us to crawl along windowsills as Carmelita blasted out what glass was left. Most of the walls of the dragon temple were gone, but a few allowed us to duck behind them, avoiding the crazy fox with the shock pistol.

"This place would be pretty if it weren't in such disrepair," I muttered, as we took a few moments to catch our breaths while huddled on some rooftops behind the statue, where Carmelita couldn't get us.

Sly shook some snowflakes out of his coat. "I doubt the Panda King cares much about the aesthetics of his explosives factory."

As I panted, I thought. Carmelita was still out there and she really, _really_ wanted to shoot Sly. She was waiting, probably had her shock pistol trained on where we were supposed to come out.

"Maybe I can distract her," I offered reluctantly. "I doubt she'll go chasing after you if I run up to her and say I got away-"

"No."

I glanced over at Sly, only to find him looking pointedly away. "But-"

"No." He struggled for a moment, then said, "You know where the van is."

It was a weak excuse. It was a pathetic reason. I should have argued against it, it was high time for me to go home anyway, but... "Fair enough."

He reached out, taking my hand again and leaning forward, eyes tracking the route we were going to have to take. "Come on."

* * *

Bentley was about ten second from crawling out of his own shell with anxiety when Sly and Kaia came tumbling in through the back doors of the van. "Where have you two _been_?"

Kaia's head came up. Her eyes were over bright and she was giggling, a manic grin plastered across her face. "We ran away from Carmelita on giant icicles and I can't feel my feet."

After a long, long moment, Bentley turned to Sly and simply raised an eyebrow.

To his credit, Sly's grin was a little sheepish. "It's the adrenaline rush catching up to her. The first escape is always the best."

"Are you _corrupting her_?"

Sly pretended to think about it before nodding.

Kaia didn't even pretend to think about it as she peeled off her snow-caked shoes and soaked socks before shoving her toes as close to the vent on Bentley's computer tower as she could. "Yes he is and he should be ashamed of himself."

"I am very ashamed," Sly assured her absently as he pulled out the most recent key ring, fitting a fifth ring to it.

Without being prompted, Bentley handed over the sixth.

"I got you both ice cream," Murray said, reaching into the cup holders and passing them both paper cups.

"Oh, sweet." Kaia took one cup, looked into it, then swapped it with Sly's. Sly did not seem to mind having to swap mint chocolate chip for strawberry at all.

Bentley shuddered, huddling deeper in his shell. "How you can eat that stuff in this cold is beyond me."

Pointing at him with her spoon, Kaia informed him, "It's all a matter of how much you value ice cream over your own comfort."

Murray nodded, like this was pure wisdom, and that was all Bentley needed to know that the conversation wouldn't be making any more sense any time soon. Instead of continuing it, he pulled up the map of the Panda King's temple and pointed to the only circle not crossed out yet. "I've determined that this is the location of the last treasure key. After you get it, you'll be able to unlock the rocket cluster that should take you up to the Panda King's statue."

"Or blow me up."

"Or that," Bentley agreed.

Kaia was giving Sly a faintly concerned look. "Why do you do this? Why do you do these things? You are completely mad."

"Yes," he agreed, knocking his empty paper cup against her half-full one before leaping to his feet. "I'm going to go get the last key."

"Be careful."

* * *

There was a vehicle that Sly had had to use to get the last treasure key that was apparently identical to the one he'd used in the swamp in Haiti. Bentley'd had him bring some of the ammo from it back to the van for analysis before he'd taken off to fight the Panda King.

'Taken off' was quite literal, by the way. I'd looked over Bentley's should as the rockets had arced across the sky, carrying Sly with them to the giant statue, where the Panda King waited. My heart had been in my throat the entire time and it hadn't gone down when the fight had actually started.

I'd been banished from the van for the fight due to the fact that, if the pattern stayed true, they'd probably figure out the location of the last member of the Fiendish Five from the Panda King, which was something I wasn't allowed to know.

Unfortunately for Bentley, he'd forgotten one key detail.

He'd made the mistake of giving me a binocucom.

It had taken me a few moments to figure out the earbud, but once I had, I was able to listen in. I was just in time to hear Sly tell the Panda King that he'd originally come for revenge, but now he was more interested in stopping the avalanche extortion scheme.

I felt a swell of pride for Sly at the dressing-down he gave the Panda King- then I felt nothing but panic as the fight started.

Listening was nerve-wracking, but I couldn't actually watch through the binocucom without letting Bentley in on the fact that I wasn't minding my own business outside the van. All I could do was stand there, clutching the binocucom in one hand and pressing the other to my ear, like that could help me decipher the crackle of flames and the thuds of a cane hitting flesh.

Finally, there was silence, heart-stopping silence. Then-

"**Your skill with that cane is unparalleled**."

The Panda King was quiet, after that, as Bentley's voice flooded the binocucom channel.

"Sly! I did a cross analysis of the metal used in that high-tech blasting vehicle and it turns out it can only be found in one place- the Krack-Karov volcano in Russia! That's got to be where we'll find the fifth member of the Fiendish Five! So get what you came for and let's get out of here!"

"_You got it, pal._"

I blinked, stared down at the tiny machine in my hands, then swiftly put it away when the van's back doors opened.

"Sly's on his way back, come on in!"

I pulled myself into the van. "Let me guess, bad guy is vanquished, Interpol is on the way?"

"Well, Sly took care of the Panda King, but so far Interpol is-" the binocucom station started blaring warnings. "... okay, yes, it does look like Interpol is closing in."

Moments later, Sly threw the van door open and dove inside. "Punch it, Murray!"

"You got it, chum!"

"Don't punch it too fast!" I shouted, throwing my hands out to brace against the sides of the van, hyper aware of the way the wheels were squealing and that there was very likely ice on the road.

"Calm down." Sly was grinning as he dropped down next to me and reached into his backpack, producing a few pieces of paper. "I got the pages."

"Great." Bentley's fingers were still flying across his keyboard. "Okay, once we get down the mountain, we can leave Kaia somewhere with a phone-"

"Or," I interrupted, waiting until Bentley was looking at me before very deliberately pulling out the earbud I was still wearing, "Kaia could come with. Russia, right? I didn't know there were volcanoes there."

Dead silence.

Bentley closed his laptop and climbed into the front seat. "I'm going to lay down."

I felt a little bad about Bentley's blood pressure, but it was a guilt that was almost completely abated by the massive grin that was on Sly's face when I looked his way.

* * *

China is finished! Just two more chapters and an epilogue to go! Feel free to check out the blog and I'll see you all in a couple of weeks!


	9. The One With The Deal

Sorry I'm a little late today, guys! It's been kind of crazy around here lately. Cat the second needed surgery and I'm still in a leg brace for tendinitis (exercise, they said, it's good for you, they said) and I have homework and work work and ughhhhhh...

But! I am here and still mostly on time!

Enjoy the chapter!

* * *

Despite his apparent despair for the state of things, Bentley had quite clearly prepared for them anyway, given the fact that I had my own room when we reached Hong Kong. I still wasn't allowed out without supervision, but I was fine with lazing around most of the day, due to my new iPod, the bathtub the size of a small pool, and the frankly recklessly large bed.

"Are you going to get out from under the covers at any point today?"

I cracked one eye open and regarded Sly, standing at my bedside and looking amused, with far less surprise than I should have, considering the door was supposed to be locked. "I'm having a bed day. It is a day where you spend a really long time in the bathtub getting clean, then appreciate beds while you're super relaxed. So sorry, moving isn't on the schedule for the day."

Shrugging, Sly hopped up on top of the covers. "Don't you get bored?"

"I take it you've never had a bed day before."

"It's hard to relax when you don't have your own room."

I stretched my legs under the covers, giving up momentarily on the whole 'relaxation' thing. "You guys really need to get a non-portable Safehouse so you can have rooms. And beds."

"I'm sure it's in Bentley's plan." Sly produced a large paper bag from _nowhere_. "Now get up, I brought food."

_That_ got my attention. I sat up, tucking my feet under me and pulling the glorious robe that I'd stolen from the closet more tightly around my shoulders. "Whatcha got?"

Sly was spreading several containers across the bedspread and I took a moment to mentally apologize to whoever was going to have to launder the blankets. I could already smell the grease and I doubted we'd be able to keep it from getting everywhere. "Can you use chopsticks?"

"Yup." I took the utensils he offered. "Speaking of Bentley, how long do you think it'll take for him to talk to me again?"

"He'll probably be fine by the time we get back to Paris. The guy can't hold a grudge to save his life." He opened one of the containers and passed it over. "Try the dumplings."

I took the container gamely, sniffing at the contents before giving Sly a suspicious look. "What's in them?"

"I have no idea." He reached out and stole one, popping it in his mouth. "They're delicious, though," he said around a mouthful of dough and filling. Swallowing, he asked, "You have allergies?"

"Not to food." I plucked up one of the dumplings and bit into it. There was definitely meat in there, but it was slightly sweet, which was weird. Not a bad weird, though. "Not bad."

"Let me guess, you're more of an eggrolls girl."

I brandished my chopsticks at him. "Hand over the eggrolls and no one gets hurt." Laughing, Sly complied and his expression was so light that I had to say, "You seem like you're in a good mood."

Shrugging, he took back the container of dumplings. "I don't know. I'm not really used to things going right. I never really thought past getting my family's book back. But now I've nearly done that and Bentley's starting to talk about 'after', he has _plans_, apparently, for 'after'. I didn't ever really consider an 'after', but now I'm starting to and there's... there's a lot that can happen."

I thought about that, about having the means to go anywhere, to do anything, to have the complete freedom Sly, Bentley, and Murray would have. "It's... overwhelming."

Sly's smile was thoughtful, but genuine. "In a good way."

Given the fact that, a few weeks ago, Sly had been volunteering to launch himself out of suspect cannons into the blimps of mechanical maniacs, his change of heart was relieving in more ways than one. I found myself returning his smile. "I bet."

"What about you?"

I'd just taken a huge bite of eggroll, so I gestured violently at him for a few seconds until I could swallow enough to reply, "What _about_ me?"

He had the good grace not to laugh at me, not out loud, anyway. "What are your plans?"

I poked at my food with my chopsticks. "I dunno. I mean, that's not something I really get to pick for a while yet. I don't get to legally be totally person for a few more years and I have to finish high school. After that..." I sighed, flipping my chopsticks in my hand. "I don't know. Running around all over the world and seeing how much _more_ there is to it makes the idea of going home and sitting in classrooms for several more years sound like a special kind of torture."

"I remember high school," Sly said darkly. "Bentley made me finish."

"Sounds like him." I waited a few seconds, because Sly looked like he was about to say something before he decided against it. "So which ancestor did you get this time?"

Sly put his chopsticks aside and reached over the side of the bed to grab his backpack, hauling it up onto a clean patch of bedspread. Reaching inside, he pulled out the cover of the Thievius Raccoonus, which contained the still-loose pages he'd managed to collect. He flipped it open and spread the pages out before picking up some of the newer-looking ones.

"Otto van Cooper," he said, handing them over. "He wasn't so great at the athletic parts of thieving, but he was a brilliant inventor, so he built vehicles and used them for thieving instead."

"I don't understand any of this," I admitted, flipping through the pages of blueprints. Otto's page featured a portrait and an illustration of him flying a plane. I'd wanted to read the entry about his life, those were always the most interesting parts of the pages, but I was distracted by something in the illustration. "What's that?"

"What's what?" Sly asked, leaning to look at the pages I tilted toward him.

"_That_," I pointed to a spiky silhouette in the sky. "That's not a cloud."

Frowning, Sly took the page. "You're right. It looks like some kind of bird. I wonder why that's in the picture."

"It has to be deliberate," I said, shifting until I was sitting cross-legged. "It's an illustration, not a photo."

"Yeah," he agreed, turning back to the other pages. He shuffled them around, coming up with Tennessee 'Kid' Cooper's page. "Here, it's in this one too."

I took the page and, sure enough, there was the same silhouette. "Is it in all of them?"

"No." Sly was quickly dividing the pages into two categories, messing up the chronological order they'd been in before. "Look, it's not in Salim al Kupar's illustration. But most of these..."

There were three or four ancestors without the outline of the bird, but the stack with the silhouette dwarfed the one without considerably. Rioichi, Slytunkhamen, Tennessee, Thaddeus Winslow III, they were all in the silhouette pile.

"What are the odds that that's a friendly bird?" I asked, without much hope.

"You remember when we were running from Carmelita and found those clues written in owl script that Bentley said he couldn't decode?" Sly asked. His tone was flat, his earlier good mood gone like it had never been.

"Yeah?"

He took a deep breath. "When I was a kid, my dad told me that, if I ever saw a big, silver owl, I was supposed to _run_. I was supposed to run as fast as I could until I either found him or a safe hiding place. And I saw that silhouette out the window right before he hid me in the closet the night he was killed."

"But..." I looked at all the pages, representing hundreds of years of Sly's family line. "How could he have been a problem for your family for so long? He couldn't have lived that long, could he?"

"I don't know." Sly gathered up the pages quickly, but very, very carefully. "I have to go- I need to talk to Bentley about this. Bentley can figure it out."

And then I was left alone, in an empty room, with far too much Chinese food and a sinking feeling.

* * *

Back in Paris, the train car had been moved into some kind of warehouse by the time I came around.

Sly had gone from calm and optimistic to reserved and withdrawn, like he'd regressed completely to the way he was at the beginning of the summer. I'd have brought it up with Bentley, but, well, the turtle wasn't looking much better.

When I wandered out of the train car and into the warehouse, Murray had copies of Otto's blueprints drawn out on a chalkboard and was elbow-deep in machine parts and something that looked unsettlingly like heavy ammunition. I kind of wanted to ask him about it all, but I also wanted to keep all my fingers, so I steered clear.

Sly and Bentley were hunched over a table (Bentley having to stand on a chair to accomplish this) and talking in low, strained voices. Even from my distance, I could make out the Thievius Raccoonus pages and at least three different police files.

The duo went quiet as I approached and Sly stalked away, eyes down, avoiding my gaze.

Bentley sighed, slipping off his glasses to rub at his eyes. "He'd been doing so much _better_."

"What going on?" I asked, looking over my shoulder at Sly's retreating form.

Sighing and putting his glasses back on, Bentley gestured to the spread of papers. "We're not really turning up anything we can use on this guy."

I took Sly's empty place, bracing my hands on the table and looking down at the pages. "No information coming up?"

"I didn't say that." Bentley adjusted his glasses. "I said there wasn't much _of use_. All we know is where he is and that his name is Clockwerk."

Nodding, I said. "I remember reading his name in a file on the Fiendish Five."

"Right. Well, I've been trying to do research on him, but what's coming up is mostly exaggerated hearsay." Bentley sighed, dropping down to sit in his chair. "In some circles, he's a legend, in some, he's a nightmare. But no matter what, there's mentions of a 'mechanical owl' going back hundreds, maybe thousands of years."

"'Mechanical'?" I asked, crossing my arms. "Are you saying he's a robot?"

"I don't know, that would be an incredibly complex A.I. if it were true." Running a hand over his bald head, he sighed. "But that _can't_ be right. That technology can't have existed hundreds of years ago, I doubt it exists _now_."

"Prosthetics, maybe?"

Bentley shook his head, then paused, considering. "It wouldn't explain the mentions through history, but prosthetics would be easier to believe than someone coding an A.I. _that_ advanced. And it would explain the pseudonym. I just wish I could dig up more information on who _exactly_ this is. It might give us an edge."

"You seem... more nervous than usual." I was trying for casual, but missed it by a mile.

"There's no information!" The turtle threw his hands up. "With the other Fiendish Five members, at least we kind of knew where they were _coming from_, even if where they were coming from was totally inane. We knew their M.O. and their motives, we knew how to approach the situation. Clockwerk is- he's nothing! He's a ghost, a story. He wasn't the machinist or the demolitions expert, he _supplied_ the machinist and demolitions expert. Even without the fact that it looks like he has history with Sly's family, I'd say he's going to be tougher than the rest of the Fiendish Five combined."

"That... does not inspire confidence," I admitted.

"Of course it doesn't!" Dropping his head in his hands, Bentley scrubbed at his face and visibly counted to ten. "And all we know about his history with Sly's family is based on the images in the Thievius Raccoonus and that night ten years ago. Some of the legends say something about a feud with or a grudge against a thieving family, but there's nothing about it actually _recorded_." Another deep, slightly wheezy breath. "I'm going to go do some deep breathing exercises. Please go talk to Sly and try to calm him down."

"What makes you think I'm capable of doing that?" I asked, a little taken aback.

Bentley gave me a flat look. "I have faith in your endless creativity. Just go talk to him."

Holding my hands up in surrender, I backed away from the table and followed Sly's path out of the warehouse.

The train yard was fairly deserted and, honestly, a little creepy in the setting sun. Most of my view was blocked by abandoned trains and cars, the tracks overgrown by weeds until they were just complete tripping hazards, so we were probably either right outside the city or on the outskirts.

It wasn't hard to guess where Sly had gone, though. Amidst all the rusted trains and metal panels was one pole that looked sturdy and was strategically placed for roof access.

Getting up the pole was a little awkward since I was not a raccoon with inhuman body strength, but I managed to avoid falling to my death, so I called it a net win.

Sly was sitting at edge of the roof, his legs dangling off into space as he stared out at the setting sun as it painted the sky half a dozen colors and glinted off the Eiffel tower.

He opened his mouth as I settled next to him. "Bentley fill you in?"

"For the most part."

Silence reigned for a few moment before he spoke again. "Did he tell you that we think the silhouettes in the illustrations are indicators that the ancestor in that illustration was killed by Clockwerk?"

I thought about the huge stack of pages that had been separated out and swallowed hard. "No. No, he didn't."

"We don't really know what's going on here," he admitted. "But we can't stop now, not when we're so close to ending this. We can't put it off again. We know where he is and we have to go after him before he moves."

"Right," I agreed tentatively, watching him to see where he was going with this.

Sighing, he finally turned to meet my eyes. "I want you to know what's going on here so you have all the information to decide with."

I narrowed my eyes at him. "Decide what?"

Huffing, he sat back, looking out at the sun and the city of lights. "None of us really think you'd say anything if you went back at this point. And this place, it's temporary. We're planning to move somewhere more permanent, after... well, after. But we trust you. It's dangerous, and if you want to go back-"

"No."

The look he gave me for that was a little annoyed, verging on actually angry. "This isn't something you can watch on the sidelines- we're going to have to go _in there_."

"I know." I straightened and met his eyes. "I want to stay."

His face cycled through a few new and interesting expressions before he hung his head, the brim of his hat and the sunset creating deep shadows to hide his eyes. "Bentley says it's not possible. But I remember what my dad told me, what the Thievius Raccoonus says, and I just _know_. This isn't some random criminal driven by greed. He didn't come to our house for loot. There wasn't any, I don't have any idea where my dad stashed it all. All that was there was us... and the Thievius Raccoonus. It was personal."

I looked out, squinting against the last red streaks of the sun, letting Sly have a moment. "And you don't have any idea why?"

"No."

We sat in silence until the sun dipped below the horizon and the light started to rapidly fade.

"I want to come with you anyway," I told him, trying to make my voice strong and confident. It was scary, the idea of this giant, powerful unknown. But I didn't want the gang going to face him by themselves. Sly had Bentley and Murray for support, but I wanted to help too. I wanted to be there for him, for all of them, if I could.

Sly looked over at me, his eyes tired, but his smile fond. "Don't you have any self-preservation at all?"

"Oh, I am _not_ taking that from you, Mr. Cannons-Are-Awesome."

He laughed softly, looking up at the emerging stars. "Do me a favor?"

That got my attention in a hurry. Sly didn't really seem like the type to ask for help- not for himself, anyway, not from someone who wasn't in his gang. "What?"

"Just," he hung his head, "tell me it's going to be over soon. My family's deaths aren't going to be hanging over me for my whole life. I'm going to end it for them, and for me, and for my children, and for their children. It's going to end here. Just- could you please tell me that? Even if it's a lie, I really need to hear that right now."

In that moment, he looked so young. It really struck me that he wasn't that much older than me, that he was far too young to be taking on the responsibility he was willingly shouldering, the responsibility to make his entire family safe from a threat that had hounded them for as long as they'd known.

I don't know what made me do it, but I reached out and slipped my hand into his, holding it tightly and forcing him to look up and meet my eyes before I started talking.

"Sly," I said, forcing myself to sound more confident than I ever would have thought I could, "you can do this. _We_ can do this. You're not alone, you've got Bentley, who's a freaking genius, and Murray, who's building what looks like a cannon in the warehouse. And you've got everything your ancestors had, every skill they had to give. It's going to end here because you're going to end it."

For a few seconds, he kept eye contact and just seemed to focus on breathing. "And you?" he finally asked.

I raised one shoulder in a helpless shrug. "Moral support?"

That seemed to take him by surprise. He snorted in amusement, but his hand clenched reflexively to mine when he looked up at me again. "That's actually more helpful than you think," he said, and there was a weight to his words that I wasn't sure how to interpret.

"I live to serve." I covered his hand with both of mine, looking down at the tangle of fingers. "It's going to end. And I want to stay and watch it happen and make sure you're okay- all of you."

He shifted to face me, bringing his free hand around as well, until we were both holding the other's hands. "I hope you'll forgive me for letting you."

Looking up at him, I smiled. "I hope you'll forgive me for making you."

Shaking his head, he let go and stood, offering me a hand up. "How about we'll forgive each other once we're back safe?"

"Deal." I took his hand.

* * *

"Okay," Bentley said, adjusting his glasses on his nose as he tried to keep the old projector he'd found in the abandoned office in the warehouse from overheating, "the plan."

Kaia's hand immediately went up.

If they all survived this slideshow, it was going to be a miracle. "Yes, Kaia."

"Is the plan 'improvise'?"

... why was she even still there? "Not... entirely."

The hybrid looked deeply skeptical.

"Look, it's hard to know anything for certain. I can usually get some idea of what we're going in to using satellite imagery, but Clockwerk's location makes it difficult to determine anything, really." After fiddling a little with the machine, Bentley managed to project a fuzzy satellite image. "All we know for certain is that we need to get past a gate and a path leading up to the mountain, both of which will likely be heavily guarded.

"No problem!" Murray pounded a fist into his palm. "That turret Sly's ancestor made packs a punch! I bet it can handle anything that gets thrown at it!"

"Okay, good. I'm sure we'll need all the firepower we can get."

"And then after that, we improvise?" Sly asked, a ghost of a grin making its way across his somber countenance.

Bentley shrugged helplessly. "More or less."

Sly and Kaia exchanged identical looks of conspiratorial amusement and Bentley did not throw them out of the warehouse because he was the mature one in the gang. It was definitely not because the sense of deep foreboding had temporarily paralyzed him.

"Clockwerk's been relatively quiet for the last decade," he continued. "But my sources say that large amounts of machinery supplies have started moving through that part of the world. It's not a direct link, but the correlation shouldn't be ignored."

"So no waiting around, then," Sly said. His posture was deliberately relaxed, his legs crossed in front of him, slumped in his chair, his arms folded over his chest, but it did little to disguise the fact that he was a livewire of tension.

Bentley shook his head. "No. It's hard to gather what's going on from the shipments, much less which shipments are actually going there, if any, but any combination of the materials passing through that part of the world has the potential to be deadly."

"Do we have travel plans?" Kaia asked, leaning forward and bracing her elbows on her knees. She didn't look any more comfortable than Sly, but she was clearly trying to move past it while Sly was just hoarding all his nervous energy to direct at the situation causing it.

Sitting down, Bentley gestured at Murray. "It'll be a long drive, but we should be able to cover the journey in the van. It's a good thing it's summer, though."

"Yeah, I had enough of the cold in China. Russia in the winter is not something I ever want to experience."

"Also, y'know," Murray chimed in, "he's in a volcano."

"That too."

Murray dragged Kaia off to chat all about the turret he was building and Bentley seized the opportunity to corner Sly.

"What is she still doing here?" he demanded in a low voice. "She can't come with us, it's too dangerous!"

To his credit, Sly looked at least a little guilty. "She _wants_ to come, Bentley."

"Oh, well if she _want_s to launch herself headlong into a situation where she'll be virtually helpless and there's a real possibility she'll be killed if we're noticed, then who am I to stop her?"

"Look," Sly took off his hat to run his fingers through the tragedy on top of his head that he called hair, "I know. You're right. I know you're right. But- it's... you have to admit, things are _better_ when she's here, and if we take her back now-"

"You're scared we won't ever see her again," Bentley finished, feeling a throbbing headache start to build behind his eyes. He got where Sly was coming from, he really did, but this whole thing was difficult in the extreme- not in the least because he enjoyed Kaia's company too, not to mention the calming effect she had on Sly.

Or, well, he wasn't sure he'd call it _calming_, when those two got along, they were a feedback loop of enthusiasm and poor ideas and enthusiasm _for_ poor ideas. It was hard to pinpoint exactly what it was. For as long as Bentley had known Sly, there had been a quiet darkness in him that the turtle had always assumed had to do with the trauma he'd been through and the fact that he had never really been able to properly address it. As time had gone on, that darkness had grown and grown, until Bentley had been terrified that Sly would be lost within it.

Whatever the effect was, it helped bleed off the darkness, the negativity, the _poison_. It had given Bentley the chance to see and talk to his real friend for the first time in months.

So yeah, he could see why Sly wanted Kaia around. He just wasn't sure either of them could really justify it.

"She has to go back sometime." He tried to make the statement gentle, but there was no real way to do that when Sly was already shaking his head.

"I know, I do, I just." The raccoon took his time putting his hat back on his head and adjusting it before finally saying, "I don't know. It's just like she helps me get out of my own head."

Alright, Bentley had already lost the debate.

"If we take her with us," he said slowly, watching Sly's head snap up, "we have to make sure she gets out. That's our responsibility, if she comes with us. She has to come back out, we have to get her home safely."

"Yes," Sly said. Just that, just pure, complete, unreserved agreement.

It was going to take a lot more than that, but Bentley resigned himself to the fact that it usually did and Sly always managed to somehow make up the difference when he needed to.

Now all they needed to do was track a legendary immortal villain to his volcanic lair.

Great.

* * *

Alrighty, boys, girls, and other. Just one more chapter and an epilogue after this! The next story is nowhere near done, but I'm working on it and I have something else planned to fill in the time between now and when the next story is done. As always, feel free to check out the blog and I will see you in a couple of weeks!


	10. The One With The Death Ray

LAST CHAPTER! Well, last FULL chapter, anyway, we still have an epilogue.

But yeah, we're wrapping up here! Work is still happening (slowly) on the sequel, but it is coming along!

Enough about that, though. Enjoy the chapter!

* * *

"You know," I said, pressing against the back of the front seat and looking over Murray's shoulder, "for such a secretive guy, Clockwerk's not particularly subtle, is he?"

The giant security doors set into the face of the mountain in front of us were locked up tight, but they also featured a motif of a metallic owl with glowing yellow eyes, so it was safe to assume that the security wasn't to protect the identity of whoever was living in the volcano lair.

"That's not necessarily a good thing." Bentley checked his seatbelt for the millionth time, adjusting his laptop on his legs. "Okay, is everyone ready?"

"You bet!" Murray revved the engine.

Metal snapped into place as Sly locked the turret ammunition into position. The new addition to the van took up a lot of space in the back, which made the long drive a bit cramped, but it would be a lie to say I wasn't relieved for its presence. "And willing."

I nodded, running my fingertips over the extra ammo rounds. It would be my job to refill the turret if and when Sly used up all the ammo. I really, really hoped that so much ammo wouldn't be necessary, but I knew by then not to bet on that. "Ready when you are."

'Ready' was relative, really. I wasn't ready to head into mouth of the volcano that lit the clouds above it with the ominous red glow of fire and lava, nor was I ready to have someone relying on me for something important. I _was_, however, ready to get this over with.

Catching Sly looking at me, I gave him a smile that was hopefully more confident than I was and nodded- ready to go. He nodded back, got into the turret, gripping the handles tightly. "Okay , Murray. Let's do it."

With the press of a button, the roof of the van flipped open and the turret was rising up, into open air that absolutely _stank_ of sulfur.

I threw my arm over my nose, which did little to stop my eyes from watering. "Well, this job is already off to a majestic start."

Bentley's laugh was a tiny bit hysterical. "That's just what volcanoes smell like, Kaia."

"No wonder he picked this place as his evil lair," I muttered as Sly blasted in the security doors and Murray started slowly easing the van along the thin path inside, "the smell will keep anyone with a sense of smell far, far away."

"If that doesn't, all the mines will!" Murray said anxiously, eyeing the field of blinking lights in front of us, "Sly, shoot out the mines, we need a safe path!"

The turret was deafening next to my ears and I fought to keep both the ammo levels and the path in front of us in sight at all times, which was practically impossible. Fortunately, Sly cleared the last of the mines away just as he ran out of ammo, so I quickly pulled the lever to bring down the empty cartridge, pulled it free, and snapped a new one into place.

We emerged from the tunnel to see a winding stone path and a veritable ocean of lava stretching before us. Beyond it, a large, owl-shaped tower rose in the distance.

"Bingo!" Bentley said, his fingers flying over the keys on his keyboard. "My scanners indicated that Clockwerk is holed up in that tower!"

"How can you tell?" I asked, trying to get a peek at his laptop.

"He puts off a very peculiar energy signal that-"

"Whoa!" Murray ducked away from the windows as streaks of flashing metal spun around the van, shrieking. "We've got hostile robo-falcons at twelve-o'-clock!"

"I'm on it!" Sly's voice was almost completely drowned out by the rapid firing of the turret. Fortunately, the falcons didn't seem too sturdy. All it took was one hit somewhere vital and they went down, into the lava.

Even so, there were enough of them that I had to replace the ammo cartridge when Sly was done, shaking out my fingers after touching the friction-heated metal.

There was a rocky rise jutting out of the lava between us and the tower and, as we approached it, Bentley made an involuntary strangled noise. I whipped my head around to look at him, but he was staring at the tower as its eyes started to glow.

"That's no tower!" he shouted as lightning-like energy beams shot out of it, crashing into the rocky outcropping in front of us, sending a cavalcade of rocks crashing down. "It's a giant Death Ray! Sly, you've got to take out those rocks or we're in trouble!"

"Why is there a Death Ray?!" I shouted over the firing of the turret, "Why does Clockwerk have a Death Ray? What even _is_ a Death Ray?"

"I don't know, I don't know, and it's exactly what it sounds like!" Bentley shouted back, fingers digging into his seatbelt as he cringed away from the windshield and the rain of gravel that was flying as round after round of ammo pulverized the rocks that were cascading toward us.

We had maybe a split second to heave sighs of relief after the rocks were destroyed before Murray was shouting, "Heads-up! The robo-falcons are back!"

"How many of them are there?" Sly shouted in frustration, laying and shooting them down.

"Minefield!" Bentley shouted back.

Sly managed to clear away the first few mines before the turret made a clicking noise, "I need a reload- hurry!"

I quickly switched out the cartridges, swallowing when I realized there was only one more left. "We don't have unlimited ammo, Sly, keep an eye on it!"

"I know!" he shouted, before going back to clearing out the mines in our path.

At some point, Bentley had pulled his arms and legs and most of his head into his shell and now just had the top of his head and his glasses poking out to watch the Death Ray activate again. "More boulders!"

These boulders, radioactive boulders going by the way some of them pulsed green, met the same fate as the earlier rocks. One came dangerously close to hitting us, but Sly managed to divert it into the lava with the last few rounds of ammo in the cartridge.

I'd barely pried the searing empty cartridge out and snapped the last one in when Murray shouted, "We're getting swarmed!"

Mechanical falcons came pouring in, apparently having spawned from the _freaking ether_, shrieking back and forth as they swarmed around us, several lighting up for apparent kamikaze runs before Sly managed to shoot them down.

There were dozens of them and Sly was just firing into the central mass, hitting quite a few, but losing a lot of bullets too.

Only one falcon was left when the turret made the same clicking noise as before and Sly went tense and still. "I'm out!"

"Oh no!" Bentley ducked into his shell as the falcon lit up and came spinning toward us-

Three deafening cracks rent the air, echoing off the arching rocks around us. It was difficult to tell where exactly the falcon had been hit, but it crashed to one of the rocky islands in a rain of metal, wires, and parts.

"Who-" Sly started at the same time Murray said, "What-"

Bentley's head popped right back out of his shell and he gaped at the falcon parts littering the rocks as we drove past. "That was a high-caliber rifle-"

"Murray!" Sly shouted as the hippo turned into a tunnel that should lead us farther into Clockwerk's lair. "That cave doesn't look tall enough for the turret to make it all the way through-!"

It was too late, though, and Sly had to dive into the back of the van, crashing into me and knocking us both into a corner as the light vanished and we entered the tunnel completely. There was an almighty _crunch_, metal screamed, and then the turret was being yanked free of the van and tumbling to the path behind us.

"Oops," Murray said quietly.

* * *

"We need to get through that security door on the other side of the cavern. The only way to unlock it is to analyze at least sixty of those hanging computers."

"Yeah, well," Sly said, pulling the roof flaps down and securing them. "It would've been easy to get to them if Murray hadn't thrashed our new turret!"

"I said I was sorry!"

That was true, but it didn't mean Sly wasn't still a little pissed.

"We were out of ammo anyway," Jinx said, pointing at the scattered empty ammo cartridges.

Bentley had his laptop open and his fingers were a blur against it. "It won't be a problem. I can hack the computers' connection couplings so they'll fall to the ground- and into range for analysis. But the lava slugs will probably be attracted by the sound and try to find out what caused it. If they get to the computers, the heat will fry the circuitry."

"Lava slugs?" Jinx asked, getting to her knees and grabbing onto the back of the front seat to peer over Murray's shoulder at the slightly discolored orange lumps moving around under the lava. "... _why_." It wasn't a question, it was more like a sigh of resignation.

Joining her, Sly said, "Got it. Murray, if those lava slugs get anywhere near the computers while Bentley's hacking, use the new battering ram to knock them away."

"It looks like there's only one hundred and nineteen computers," Bentley said, adjusting his glasses. "If we lose sixty computers, we're not getting those doors open.

"You got it, guys!" Murray revved the engine. "Drop 'em, Bentley!"

"Um, shouldn't we have seatbelts for this?" Jinx asked, digging her claws into the back of the seat. "I mean, I really, really think we should have seatbelts for this."

"Get ready, Murray!"

Reaching around Jinx's shoulders, Sly grabbed onto the seat on the other side of her, holding on tight. "Brace yourself," he advised with a wicked grin.

She shot him a glare just as the first computer crashed to the cave floor.

"Go, Murray!"

* * *

"I'm going to throw up on everything you love."

The van was currently parked, but the only reason I was still in it was because collapsing on the volcanic rock outside of it would probably have been slightly more uncomfortable. Slightly. Very, very slightly.

Sly's cane dug into my side when he gave me a nudge. "I thought you had medicine?"

I didn't even open my eyes to reply. "There's only so much motion-sickness medication can do when Murray's doing donuts and figure eights for ten straight minutes."

"But we got all the computers!" Murray shouted. Cloth rustled as he presumably pumped a fist. "Take that, lava slugs!"

"Nice driving, Murray," Bentley agreed, his fingers clacking on his keyboard. "Alright, through those doors should be the control room for Clockwerk's Death Ray. I think it's time for a little Cooper thieving and sabotage, don't you Sly?"

"Oh," Sly purred, "_Absolutely_."

I did raise my head when he opened the back doors and prepared to jump out. "Be careful."

He grinned, saluted with his cane, and closed the doors behind him.

Peeling myself off the van floor, I crawled over to and draped myself across the back seat, looking at the binocucom feed on Bentley's computer. "Theories on the Death Ray?"

"It might have just been security," Bentley said slowly, "but I doubt Clockwerk would go through that much trouble. He doesn't seem like the type to run and hide."

"Yeah," I agreed, watching the little raccoon icon move into the next room. "So what's he planning?"

"Hopefully, we'll never have to find out."

The three of us waited in silence until Sly pulled out his binocucom to do a survey of the next room.

"Careful, Sly!" Bentley warned, zooming in on the walkway to the next part of the mountain. "Those tiles are booby-trapped. You'd better get out of there until we can find a way around."

"_Hold on_," Sly said, zooming in farther, on a figure in the next area. "_That's Carmelita! She looks trapped._"

"What's she doing here?!" I leaned forward, trying to see. "How did she get here before us?"

"_I don't know, but we've got to free her_."

"Are you crazy, Sly?" Bentley asked. "Clockwerk probably stuck her there to trap you! And if you let her out, she's just going to turn on you, no matter what. Remember China? I reviewed the footage, she doesn't care about anything other than that you're a criminal."

"_We can't just leave her to _die, _Bentley. Besides, what fun is thieving if you don't get to dodge the cops now and then?_"

"Safer?" Bentley ventured, but then sighed, clearly aware that he wasn't going to win this one. "Your ridiculous raccoon logic sends shivers up my shell, but if you're determined to go through with this, that barrel will undoubtedly help- though I have _no idea_ how you'll get up there."

"_Dude, a spire jump here, a rail slide there- I've done this a million times!_"

Sly clicked off and Bentley sighed.

"Do you think they'll be okay?" Murray asked, drumming his fingers against the steering wheel.

"I hope so, pal."

We watched, tense and silent as Sly moved through the room, avoiding the booby traps where he could and shielding himself with the barrel when he couldn't. He made it to Carmelita and it was almost no surprise when the room sealed up behind him.

"No!" Bentley shouted, watching Sly try to smash through the glass and fail.

The monitors in the room lit up with that familiar spiky silhouette and a computerized voice filtered through the speakers. It was calm and smooth and made my fur stand on end.

"_You sentimental fool. Empathy has always been the downfall of the Cooper clan._"

Gas started flowing into the room and Sly collapsed.

I didn't feel like I could breathe, but Bentley was moving quickly.

"I _knew_ this was a trap!" he shouted. "I've got to shut off that gas before it turns Sly's brain to cheese. Kaia, take a binocucom and something to use as a weapon, we don't have any idea what kind of condition Sly is going to be in when I stop this, you might have to pull him out. And there's a pouch stored with the binocucom, try and get it to Sly."

There was no response for that. At least, not one I could come up with.

But, by now, I knew where the binocucom Bentley had me use was stored. I knew where it was and I knew where the hefty tire iron I'd used in Mesa City was.

Grabbing them both, I also grabbed the pouch Bentley had mentioned, strapped it to my leg, and took off out of the van.

Sly had already shut off all the security in the next room. If all I had to do was run and pull him out, it didn't matter that I wasn't a trained thief. I could do it.

The air outside was stifling and it stank and I was sweating practically before the van doors slammed shut behind me, but I could still run. The tunnel leading forward was dark, lit only from behind and from in front, from the red-hot magma flowing through the rooms.

Clockwerk's control room was a mess. One of the walkways had broken loose, all the security was broken and off, and bits of his defenses were littering the path.

The gas in the room was already dissipating as I got closer, vanishing almost instantly when the bulletproof glass blocking the entrance slid open. Still, I held my breath as I ran in, just in case.

"Kaia?!"

Carmelita was fine, kept safe from the gas by the force field, somehow, so I ignored her.

Sly was on his hands and knees, gasping and coughing, and I knelt next to him, hands fluttering around, not sure if it was okay to touch. "Are you okay?"

He nodded, then shook his head, as if to clear it. "Carme-" He looked up, saw Carmelita staring down at him, and sighed in relief. "Good."

"I was wrong about you," Carmelita said. She still sounded angry, frustrated, but not with Sly, not with us. "Get me out of this force field and I'll make it up to you somehow."

Sly reached out, gripping my arm, and I helped him up, taking a lot of his weight until he could shake off the gas. Even when he started to pull away, I was reluctant to let him. "You good?"

"Yeah." He gripped his can tightly and swung it at the base of the force field's casing.

Carmelita spun and fire her shock pistol at the door to the rest of the fortress, breaking it down. "Come on," she said, looking at us over her shoulder, "we need to get out of here before the gas comes back online."

Exchanging glances with Sly, I shrugged, and we followed after her.

We came out on a ledge overlooking a giant pool of lava and the machinery that I assumed powered Clockwerk's Death Ray. Carmelita was staring out at it, looking antsy, but she looked up when we approached.

"I don't get it," she said to Sly. "I've hunted you for ages, tried to throw you behind bars, but when you get a chance to leave me in a cage, you set me free. Why?"

"Carmelita," Sly said, rolling his eyes. "We may be on opposite sides of the law, but you're not my enemy. Now, the homicidal robotic owl that built this Death Ray and nearly gassed us to death? _T__hat_ guy's on my list."

"Besides," I said, tucking the tire iron under my arm so I could hold up both hands, palms ups, "it's not exactly equal. If he'd left you, you'd have died. You weren't exactly out for blood."

"I see your point," Carmelita sighed, looking out at the Death Ray. "In that case, until Clockwerk and his evil schemes are destroyed, I suggest we work together."

Sly grinned, looking around, "I have the feeling the three of us will make an excellent team."

"Hold on, ringtail," Carmelita growled. "This truce is only temporary. As soon as we take down Clockwerk, I'm coming after you."

Giving her a wounded look, Sly raised his eyebrows and asked, "Really?"

Hesitating, Carmelita amended, "Well... maybe I'll give you a... ten second head start." She rounded on me. "But _you're_ coming back to Paris until your father can come collect you."

"And lock me in a tower somewhere," I sighed.

A familiar screech echoed through the area and we all looked up just in time to see a robo-falcon diving toward us. We all ducked, but Sly was knocked off balance when the falcon ripped his cane out of his grip and I had to lunge to grab his shirt before he could go into the lava.

"Wha-" Sly watched as the falcon circled. Carmelita leveled her pistol and fired off a shot, sending the falcon crashing into the Death Ray. "I need that cane! It's been in my family for generations!"

"Don't worry, ringtail," Carmelita snapped, switching out the power cell in her shock pistol. "I'll cover you while you get it back. If you can, make your way to the top of the Death Ray. That's where I stashed my jet pack before Clockwerk nabbed me."

"So that's how you got- wait. Wait, wait, since when are jet packs standard issue for Interpol officers?" I asked, narrowing my eyes at Carmelita.

She shifted and avoided my eyes. "I didn't think R&amp;D would miss it. Besides, I couldn't wait around for them to finish testing."

"Remind me to return to this conversation after I get my cane back." Sly hurried off, jumping onto a nearby line and using the rail slide to ride it all the way down.

"So," Carmelita said, her voice casual as she blew up lava slugs with her shock pistol. "You're really not hurt?"

"No," I crouched at the edge of the outcropping, trying not to look down as I tracked Sly with my eyes. He was putting an awful lot of trust in Carmelita, expecting her to watch his back. Still, anyone who knew Carmelita at all knew that she would keep her word. "The Cooper gang's not bad. The only reason they haven't dropped me off at an American embassy somewhere is because I've always known their next stop. They didn't want to meet an Interpol welcoming committee."

"And how did you always come by that information?" Carmelita had one of those mom voices when it suited her. 'And _how_ did you lose your homework, Kaia? Does it have anything to do with the ashes in the fireplace?'

"Some things," I said safely, still not looking up, "defy explanation."

"Mm-hmm," she hummed disbelievingly, returning her shock pistol to her side when Sly reached the top of the Death Ray machinery and gave us a jaunty wave. "Nice job, raccoon."

"Now what?" I asked, standing.

"Now we follow," Carmelita said. "The path is clear and I'm not trusting a criminal to do my job for me."

I cocked my head at her. "When you say 'we'-"

"You're coming too. I'm not letting you out of my sight until we're back in Paris."

"Sounds... awesome."

* * *

I hadn't exactly been sure what to expect from Clockwerk.

If even half the stories about him were to be believed, he was centuries-old, he was cunning, he was ruthless, and he _despised_ the Cooper clan.

But it was one thing to hear all that, to think about it, imagine it. It was another entirely to see Sly, hovering with a jet pack over the lake of lava that had just consumed Clockwerk's Death Ray, and watch Clockwerk take to the sky to meet him.

Clockwerk was like nothing I'd ever seen. I'd met owls before, I just pictured one of them made of metal and pure evil. But Clockwerk didn't look like a person, he looked like a pure animal, one with no intelligence.

But he spoke, his voice full of quiet, potent hatred, carrying across the mouth of the volcano, to where Carmelita and I stood, watching.

"_Sly Cooper. You have escaped my gas chamber and destroyed my Death Ray. Remarkable. You Coopers always find a way to beat me._"

"_Always?!_" Sly voice crackled through the binocucom earbud that was still in my ear. "_So that _was_ you in all those pictures in the Thievius Raccoonus! Just how old _are_ you?_"

"_Perfection has no age_."

Carmelita raised her shock pistol and fired. The ball of electricity impacted, but didn't seem to do any damage. "What is this?"

"_What_," Sly was demanding, "_you're immortal?_"

"_Revenge is the prime ingredient in the fountain of youth_." Clockwerk didn't seem to notice or care about the fact that Carmelita was hitting him with shock round after shock round. "_I've kept myself alive for hundreds of years with a steady diet of jealousy and hate, awaiting the day when I would finally eclipse your family's thieving reputation_!"

"Kaia!" Bentley's voice came over the binocucom as Sly and Clockwork rose into the air, "Tell Carmelita to keep firing! The rounds from her shock pistol interfere with Clockwerk's magnetic armor! If Sly can fire into those holes, he'll be doing damage at a rate Clockwerk won't be able to keep up with!"

"Carmelita, keep firing, you're making holes in his armor! Sly!" I looked up at where Sly was turning, trying to keep Clockwerk in sight as the owl circled him. "I'll tell you where to fire, get ready!"

Carmelita's first bolt slammed into Clockwerk's head.

"Aim for his head, Sly!"

The rockets from the jetpack crashed into Clockwerk's head, warping and twisting the metal, now that there was no armor to protect it.

Clockwerk screeched, turning, and Carmelita's next bolt took out the armor on his talons. I realized with sick admiration that she was trying to make it so that he couldn't land by taking out his feet.

"His claws, Sly, aim for the talons!"

My heart pounded as I watched Sly dive and weave, avoiding Clockwerk's shots while trying to make his own. At least Carmelita was shooting- all I could do was sit and watch.

After several rounds to the wing, Clockwerk lost his equilibrium and plunged into the lava.

"Great shooting Sly!" Bentley cheered. "You got him!"

The next second, Clockwerk rose from the lava. His outer metal casing had come away in some places, especially around his face, revealing the moving parts, supports, and wires. Somehow, it didn't make him any less intimidating.

"Wow, that's one tough owl."

"_I don't get it,_" Sly said, as Carmelita frantically switched out the power cells in her pistol, "_You're so familiar with my family- you _must_ have known my father had a son. If you hated the Coopers so much, why did you let me live when you stole the Thievius Raccoonus?_"

"_Because I wanted to show the world that without your precious book, the Cooper line was nothing_!"

"_Ah, well, that's where you're wrong. The Thievius Raccoonus doesn't create great thieves- it take great thieves to create the Thievius Raccoonus._"

"_Enough, Sly Cooper!_" Clockwerk shouted, his frustration coming through for the first time. "_I'll finish you like I finished your father. Then the Cooper line will be erased and the only master thief will be Clockwerk_!"

Clockwerk's efficacy faded with his cool. It only took a few more hits to the head and wings for Sly to put him back in the lava- and, this time? He couldn't get up.

"Now's your only chance, Sly!" Bentley shouted as Sly abandoned the jet back to land on a hunk of metal outside the range of Clockwerk's flailing wings. "You have to get to his head and destroy it before his auto-reconstruct circuitry kicks in!"

"We need to get down there!" I said, turning to Carmelita. She nodded, face tight, and we took off running.

"_I am..._"

It was hard to tell if Clockwerk was trying to say something or if his mechanical voice protocols were just on the fritz from the heat, but he wasn't going down quiet.

"_Blue seven_."

I could see Sly running across the lava out of the corner of my eye as Carmelita and I tried to get closer to the lava lake in the center of the volcano. Carmelita jumped ahead and I looked over again, trying to track Sly's progress.

Clockwerk's motions stilled for an instant as I found myself standing directly in front of him.

My heart seized in my chest with terror, even though I knew Clockwerk couldn't possibly move. Even in the mouth of the volcano, my body went cold and clammy and my breath came short.

Clockwerk's eyes spun in his head when they met mine, shuttering and flickering different colors.

_"... flowers..._"

Then Sly landed on Clockwerk's back and started smashing his cane into the head that spun to meet him.

Carmelita landed next to me and grabbed my arm, pulling me along behind her. "Come on!"

"_Cooper! You will never be rid of me! Clockwerk is superior_!"

Those were the last words Clockwerk said before his head snapped of his neck and went arching across the lake of lava to crash into the molten magma.

* * *

There was a platform that must once have been a walkway that led to the Death Ray.

Why a walkway would have been necessary for an owl was beyond me. All I knew was that a walkway _was_ there, it _did_ have a handrail, and that Carmelita used the handrail as a convenient place to handcuff me.

"I have done nothing to deserve this," I informed her, rattling the silver cuff around my left wrist.

"Just making sure you don't wander off and come across any dangerous information," Carmelita said flatly, looking out across the lava.

Sly was on an outcropping not that far away, crouching and staring down at a few pieces of paper. Clockwerk had apparently had the last few pages of the Thievius Raccoonus _on him_ and Sly'd had to practically go into the lava after him to recover them.

The van came screeching into the area, skidding to a stop so Murray and Bentley could both jump out. Murray saw Sly and cheered, raising his fists in the air, while Bentley crouched near the edge of the lava to examine some of the wreckage of Clockwerk.

I watched Sly's shoulders rise and fall in a heavy breath. Then he stood, shouldering his cane and making his way back.

He'd nearly reached us before he stood up and actually saw us. His eyes widened in surprise, then he grinned. There was soot smeared all into his fur and his shirt was ripped, showing off a wide gash on his right shoulder, barely visible under the blood that was soaking into the cloth around it.

But he was smiling. "Last time I checked, you can't just handcuff civilians to things, Inspector."

"I'm just taking her back where she belongs," Carmelita said, raising her shock pistol. "But don't worry." She pulled out another pair of handcuffs from a pocket. "There's more than enough to go around."

Sly went tense, preparing to run, but then Carmelita smirked.

"Ten."

Eyes widening in realization, Sly's mouth fell open before curling into its own smirk.

"Nine."

Sly looked my way, eyes narrowing in thought.

"Eight."

I raised an eyebrow and reached down with my free hand to pull free the pouch that Bentley had asked me to give Sly earlier, only for the raccoon to see it and grow an unholy grin.

"Seven."

Waving to get Bentley and Murray's attention, Sly waved them back into the van and gestured for them to drive down the mountain a little.

"Six." Carmelita was starting to sound confused at the fact that Sly still hadn't run off. "Five?"

She sounded even more surprised when Sly braced his cane against the rock as his feet and leaned his folded arms on top of it.

"... four."

I reached into the pouch and felt something small and spherical.

"... three?"

I pulled out a smoke bomb.

"... two..."

I looked up at Sly. He winked at me.

"... one."

Carmelita's pistol whined as she turned off the safety, prepping a shock round just as I threw a smoke bomb at her feet. It exploded, engulfing us both before she could get a single shot off. She started coughing.

"Cooper!"

I coughed into my sleeve, clutching another smoke bomb, just in case, when I felt hands on my left arm. My hand came free and another slipped into it, pulling me out of the way before letting go. I couldn't see a thing, but I heard a short scuffle and some metallic clinking before my hand was grabbed again.

"Come on!"

And then we were running.

We were out of the smoke cloud in just a few steps, running up the walkway, back toward the path where Bentley and Murray would be waiting. Carmelita was screeching behind us, but neither of us dared look back.

When we rounded the corner, we almost ran right into the van.

"Did you cuff her to the railing in my place?" I asked, panting.

"Yup." Sly tossed a key in his hand. "Don't worry, she'll be out in no time."

Bentley leaned out the passenger window of the van. "She sent out a distress call to Interpol when Clockwerk captured her. They're inbound, should be about a half hour."

"We gotta make tracks, Sly!" Murray shouted, leaning out _his_ window.

"Yeah, pal, I just," Sly look at me, then looked away, scratching at the back of his neck with his good arm. "I just thought we deserved a chance to say a decent goodbye, that's all."

For a few seconds, no one said anything. All there was to hear was the burble of the lava and the wind of the mountain.

I looked at Murray, at Bentley, and at Sly, who was still just standing there, bleeding, holding his family's legacy with one hand and the key he'd just used to set me free in the other.

And I couldn't image going back home. Not yet.

"You know..." I said, slowly, trying not to sound too hopeful or _be_ too hopeful. "You know, I... I still have a few weeks of summer vacation left."

Sly looked up, the look on his face mirroring my own wariness to hope exactly. Slowly, he smiled. It was a new smile, soft and warm. "Yeah?"

"Yeah."

"Before you have to go back to school?"

"Mm-hmm."

"Lots of things can happen over summer vacation."

"I know."

"Oh, for crying out loud!" Bentley shouted, throwing his hands up. "Just invite her in before you bleed out or Interpol shows up!"

Throwing his head back, Sly started laughing. It was a little hysterical, like all the adrenaline and fear and relief and pain was catching up to him and he just needed to give it all a minute to come out.

Leaning forward, still chuckling, he pulled open one of the back doors and gestured. "Shall we?"

I hopped inside and pulled him in after me. "By all means."

* * *

And we're done! Sorry to those of you who were clamoring for a romance, I just didn't think it would be realistic at this point for either Sly or Kaia. A bit of flirtation will have to do.

BE SURE TO CHECK OUT THE EPILOGUE IN A FEW WEEKS! I'm serious, it will reveal information about the sequel and there will be an announcement afterwards about what we'll be doing while I'm writing the next story.

Until then, feel free to leave me your thoughts and check out the blog! See you in a couple of weeks!


	11. The One With The Epilogue

EPILOGUE! This is getting uploaded a little earlier than usual for reasons that will be detailed in the end announcement (SERIOUSLY PLEASE STICK AROUND FOR THE END ANNOUNCEMENT IT IS IMPORTANT)

Enjoy!

* * *

"... and they lived happily ever after," said the fox crouched atop a tall, rocky ledge, as he watched the blue van speed away down the mountain. A distant speck of an Interpol officer was attempting to chase after them on foot, but the gap was widening by the second.

Standing, the fox stretched his arms over his head and sighed. Then he leaned down to scoop up the large rifle that had been lying next to him. Shouldering it, he began to make his way down the mountain, carefully navigating the steep slope.

When he came to the path just inside the entrance, he veered right, spotting what he needed nearby. Carefully, he leapt onto the rocky island in the middle of the lava.

Fortunately, he didn't knock any of the parts from the downed robo-falcon into the magma. Using the barrel of his rifle, he sifted through the parts until he spotted a blue glimmer.

Ears perking up, he crouched down and pried the glowing blue cylinder from its setting. Flipping it over in his hands, he smiled. "Perfect."

Standing, he slipped the cylinder into his pocket and gripped the barrel of his rifle tightly. Drawing back, he swung, sending the gun whirling through the air until it landed soundly in the lava, beginning to melt before it was even completely submerged.

The fox jumped from the island to a nearby bank, then from there ran up to a little niche in the rocks. Reaching inside, he pulled out a small bag. From the bag, he retrieved a circular machine. Flipping it onto its front, he pried the back panel loose.

The machinery inside looked fine, except for a grey, cracked cylinder. Prying it free, he pitched it into the lava river, then pulled the blue cylinder from his pocket and fitted it into the opened space.

Sparks flared as the cylinder snapped into place and the fox hissed, shaking his fingers before shoving them in his mouth to ease the burning. Placing the back panel back in place with his good hand, the fox flipped the machine over, set it on the ground, stood, and took a couple of steps back.

Pushing up the sleeve of his jacket, the fox covered the face of his watch with a thumb and pressed down.

There was a nearly-inaudible _click_ and the machine on the ground lit up. Four legs unfolded and braced against the volcanic, lifting the machine upward until it was perfectly level. A pale green light came on in the center an instant before a holographic projection began to hover over it.

A small ocelot woman in a business suit stood there and straightened when she saw the fox, but he spoke before she could say anything.

"I told you so."

The ocelot's face darkened and she sighed, "_Sinclair-_"

"No," the fox said. "I told you, I said, 'Chief, it's not smart to just pick up random tech and use it without going to the guy who made it to get a manual.' I said, 'Don't let Sawyer touch it, Chief.' But you did all of those things and I've been _stuck_ in an _alternate universe_ for _two months_ and my fiancé is _never going to forgive me_."

"_I understand your frustration_-"

"No," the fox interrupted again. "I thought I was never going to see my family again. I worked hard for that family. You know that. Getting the adoption papers in order was practically impossible. You're going to have to do better than understanding. This is why I always request to work with Evee."

"_And here I always thought it was because you had a crush on her,_" the ocelot said, dry and sarcastic.

"One, I'm _engaged_, two, the fact that you don't know that Evee is hella gay _deeply concerns me_."

"_Alright_," the ocelot held up her hands in surrender, her expression tired. "_What do you want?_"

The fox crossed his arms. "You know what I want."

"_You're a translator, I can't just send you on an unsanctioned mission_-"

"You're the one who sanctions missions. And you know this is in your best interest anyway, the destabilization is what made me wind up here in the first place, things will only get worse the longer this is left alone." After a pause, the fox continued. "Also, I want a month off for my honeymoon. And immunity."

"_Immunity?!_"

Pointing a finger at the hologram, the fox growled. "Two. Months. In. An. Alternate. Universe. The tech to fix the communicator after it shorted out didn't even exist, I had to find an ETO to get it up and running. I _deserve_ immunity."

The ocelot sighed deeply, tilting her head as she thought. "_You're right about some of it, at least. Alright, fine. I accept your terms. You'll start on the mission as soon as you get back._"

"I'm taking a week off to remind my fiancé and my son what my face looks like, _then_ I'll start on it."

"Fine." The ocelot looked somewhere the hologram didn't show. "_Evelyn has locked onto your location. She's compensating for the destabilization. Have you erased all traces of your presence?_"

"Yes." The sniper rifle was slag by now.

"_Do you have all your belongings_?"

"Yes."

"_Alright. Stand by_."

Shouldering his bag, the fox picked up the circular machine and slipped it into the bag. Then he took a deep breath and held still.

The watch around his wrist began to glow green, then launched forward, dragging him into a bright, shining blue portal.

When he finally hit the ground, it was grass, not volcanic rock. The sky overhead was dark and filled with stars.

Standing, the fox groaned, rolled his shoulder, and looked up at the farmhouse at the top of the hill. He checked to make sure his bag was secure, then began trudging toward the house.

Climbing the wooden steps to the front door as quietly as possible, he slipped a hand into his pocket and withdrew a key, with which he unlocked both the front knob and the dead bolt. Gently pushing the door open, he slipped inside, closing and locking it behind him.

Fumbling in the darkness of the house, he managed to locate the lamp by the door and turned it on, filling the room with a dim orange light.

He hung his bag on a hook behind the door, then his jacket. Stretching his arms over his head again, he inhaled deeply and relaxed.

Toeing off his shoes, he turned to go deeper into the house, but stopped when he caught sight of a black cat stretched out on the couch. The cat was asleep, with his head propped on a throw pillow, a cell phone held loosely in one hand, and a too-short fleece blanket draped across his shoulders.

Silently, the fox moved forward, walking around the coffee table and kneeling in front of the cat. Reaching out, he laid his hand on the cat's shoulder and gave it a gentle shake.

Grumbling, the cat shifted, then opened violet eyes that grimly reflected the lamp's dim light when they widened.

The fox grinned. "Morning, gorgeous."

* * *

The epilogue was probably my favorite part of this story to write, not gonna lie. AND you guys have a little idea of what the next story is going to entail!

Speaking of the next story...

It is not even close to close to finished. I'm twenty thousand words in and I'm not even done with the first "level" yet. This is going to be a _very_ long story. Still, I have something else for you guys in the meanwhile!

I've started a Twitch account, which for those of you who don't know, is a livestreaming account for gaming. Like let's plays, but live, with a chat so you can interact with the streamer in (almost) real time (there's usually a 1-2 min delay). This Thursday, July 9th, at 3PM CST, I will be doing a speedrun of Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus. I was going to do it Friday, so I could do it on my birthday, but SOMEONE (my mod) is leaving town Friday morning and won't be able to be there (why, Peri).

I'm doing a speedrun of the first game because I played it so much recently when writing this story and I just want to get through it, but I'll play the other three games more slowly. A level or two per week, every Friday at 3PM CST, unless there are extenuating circumstances, which will be announced on the blog if they occur. If this turns out to be fun and successful (aka people actually show up and enjoy it) I'll probably continue on to play other games on the channel, which I think would be fun a lot of fun!

I'll post the link to my Twitch account on my ffdotnet profile and also on the blog. The Twitch profile is very much a work in progress. I'm working with (shamelessly begging) the artist who did all the covers and a lot of the art for this series to get some better art stuff (icon, banner, title cards, etc), so what's up right now is really just placeholders. Still, I'd LOVE if you stopped by and dropped a follow so you can be notified when I go live (you'll need an account for that and to participate in chat, but it's free!), or you can just swing by Thursday at 3! You'll get to hear all my ramblings on the Sly Cooper series and ask questions (and if you don't have any questions after this epilogue, I will be super surprised) and maybe even listen to the undignified rage noises I make when fighting Clockwerk!

Hope to see you there!


End file.
